Sophomore sensation

They were pushing, clawing, scraping -- basically doing everything to keep pint-sized Annie Speese from scoring goals.

As the action unfolded at the fields behind the Wilson YMCA, Sarah Speese was seething. Her daughter had never been knocked around, and now she was watching the other team double-, even triple-team her in a recreation soccer game. When she pointed this out to Annie after the game, her daughter responded with an outlook that belied her youth: "Mom, it's a compliment they're doing that."

The attention opponents were forced to pay Annie Speese some 10 years ago in youth soccer still follows her today. In that time, Speese, a Westminster sophomore, has developed into one of the best players in the state if not the country for her age group.

The slick midfielder is The Augusta Chronicle girls soccer player of the year for scoring a team-best 36 goals in the Wildcats' GISA Class AAA state-championship season. Speese, with two seasons to play, holds every scoring record at the school.

"There are some top D-I programs that would take her right now; they would literally take her right now," said Campbell Chapman, a former English professional player who coaches Speese's Gwinnett-based club soccer team. "She's not a secret to anybody."

Speese's initial limitations -- she was always one of the smallest players on the field growing up -- sparked the player she has become. At 5-foot-5, she is tiny no more, yet she maintains the quick touches once necessary to dance past larger, more physical defenders.

"I used to have to be in the front row of pictures," Speese said. "Now I can get away with (standing) in the back row."

It fed Speese's competitiveness to join the teams that offered the most challenges. She played with older girls even when she was 6. She played on boys teams before she was a teenager. For the past three seasons, she traveled to Gwinnett County to play with the top club team in the state and one of the best in the Southeast.

That Speese was playing with top competition sometimes invited cruel assessments.

Like the time an opposing coach pointed at her and hollered to one of his players: Mark the little one.

"So (Annie) did some cool move and hammered one into the goal," said her father, Clark Speese.

Touch, in soccer jargon, refers to how well a player can control the ball. Speese, her coaches explained, has great touch. She was forced to learn it at a young age to offset the physical difference between her and opponents. She is now capable of juggling -- when soccer players use, primarily, their feet to knock the ball in the air without letting it touch the ground -- 4,367 times.

"Her aspirations are to play at a high D-I college and on the women's national team," Westminster coach Mike Freace said. "Those (goals) do not come easy, and she knows that."

Playing for the first time in high school with longtime club teammate Cara Smith, a Westminster freshman, Speese led an attack that produced 101 goals.

She missed the first six games of the season while playing for a regional all-star team in Europe and still scored the second-most goals in the area.

"A lot of people felt like we would fall apart," she said, noting Westminster lost a large core of seniors from last year. "But we (didn't). ... I wouldn't trade my time with this team for anything."