A Noble Goalkeeper
September 13, 2006 09:47 AM | General
September 13, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va.- Five years ago when Nick Noble was playing his senior season of high school soccer at Georgetown Prep, he probably never imagined he would one day be a senior leader on a top 10 team in the Big East Conference, much less become the best goalkeeper in the history of West Virginia University.
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| Nick Noble owns the school record for career shutouts with 30.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
However unlikely it was then, that has become the reality for Noble today. He admits back then he had his eyes set on becoming a Midshipman rather than a Mountaineer.
“I wasn’t heavily recruited, I didn’t even start for my club team,” Noble said. “I planned on going to the Naval Academy but I found out I was color blind so I was disqualified from that.”
With Navy gone as an option, Noble was forced to look elsewhere. West Virginia called at the last minute and it was the combination of major college soccer and his chosen academic pursuit that lured the Damascus, Md., native to the Mountain State.
“West Virginia started recruiting me really late in the process. I got a call from the goalkeeper coach around November and it just clicked from there. I had been looking for a school where I could do engineering as well as play big time soccer and West Virginia was perfect,” Noble said.
Noble, who now owns the school record with 30 career shutouts, admits that in his freshman season a mark such as that seemed miles away from attainable.
“I didn’t think it was possible. We won five games my freshman year and to tally up the 30 shutouts that we have right now is more than I could have ever imagined,” Noble said.
Despite the personal achievement and the fact that the goalkeeper gets the credit in the stat column, Noble fully recognizes that a soccer shutout is really a great team accomplishment.
“It is just a credit to the rest of the team. I like to put them in front of myself because as good as we have been defensively, they deserve a lot of the credit as well,” Noble said.
Noble, who has started every game in goal for the Mountaineers since the fifth game of his freshman season, says that the adjustment to new head coach Marlon LeBlanc has been a very smooth one.
“We have a lot of experience, we’re still a young team but we still have a lot of guys that have been around for a long time. I think a lot of the credit goes to the juniors and the seniors that helped that progression move along. We took what we had in the past and then we took in Marlon’s aspects and it has made us better,” Noble said.
Noble is impressed with how LeBlanc has transformed the Mountaineers from a defensive-minded team to more of an attacking threat.
“We play with one striker now which doesn’t sound like it would be more offensive but it is more offensive because we get more of our team involved in the offense. We send our outside backs and get them involved in the offense a lot more this year. We move the ball around a lot more with Marlon. He wants to score goals. In the past we have tried to win 1-0 where now we are trying to put teams away,” Noble said.
Noble says that taking the old defensive strategy and combining those skills with LeBlanc’s attacking style has created a best-of-both-worlds scenario that has catapulted the Mountaineers into the nation’s soccer elite.
“We had the foundation of a defensive team and we just needed a little more push in the offensive side and a little more freedom to go forward and attack,” Noble said.
Noble concedes that despite a successful 13-8-2 campaign last year and a subsequent NCAA Tournament bid, he never imagined the Mountaineers (5-0-1) would get off to such a hot start this season.
“You can’t really expect that because every game is a challenge, especially in the Big East where you can’t take any teams lightly. To go 5-0-1 in your first six games in unheard of and I guess we are one of only a few teams that have done so well,” Noble said.
Noble says he isn’t expecting the Mountaineers to slow down anytime soon. He is expecting big things as the season progresses.
“From now on, with the start we had, my expectations are to make it to the Big East final and then get a home seed in the NCAA Tournament. Then we go from there. Once you get in the NCAA Tournament anything can happen. You can win a few games and get on a hot streak and you’re in the Final Four,” Noble said.
Noble and the Mountaineers take their undefeated record and No. 8 national ranking on the road for the first time this season when they travel to Tampa, Fla., for a match against the South Florida Bulls on Friday evening. Kick-off from USF Soccer Stadium is set for 7:30 p.m.
