TOURNAMENT HALL OF FAME

Jill Gilbeau Wash Freedom Patrick Henry/Texas

Carrie Dew, FC Gold Pride, La Costa Canyon/Notre Dame

Rachel Buehler, FC Gold Pride, Torrey Pines/Stanford

LEFT TO RIGHT: Bottom Row

Natalie Spilger Chicago Red Stars Granite Hills/Stanford

Angie Woznuk Saint Louis Athletica USDHS/Portland U.

MANDY CLEMENS (UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO HIGH SCHOOL/SANTA CLARA UNI./SAN JOSE CYBERRAYS)/CLEMENS ACTION

ALLIE KEMP (SAN DIEGUITO HIGH SCHOOL/CAL BERKELEY/BOSTON BREAKERS/SAN DIEGO SPIRIT)/KEMP ACTION

JENNIFER LALOR (BONITA VISTA HS/SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY/NEW YORK POWER/SAN DIEGO SPIRIT)/LALOR ACTION

LINNEA QUINONES (BONITA VISTA HS/SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY/SAN JOSE CYBERAYS)/QUINONES ACTION

SHANNON MACMILLAN (SAN PASQUAL HS/PORTLAND UNIVERSITY/SAN DIEGO SPIRIT)//MCMILLAN ACTION

SARA BARNETT (BONITA VISTA HS/SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY)

RITA HIRMEZ (MT. CARMEL HS/STANFORD UNIVERSITY)

NATALIE SPILGER (GRANITE HILLS HS/STANFORD UNIVERSITY)/SPILGER ACTION

ANGIE WOZNUK (UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO HS/PORTLAND UNIVERSITY)/WOZNUK BARONS MVP

Natalie Spilger was a Parade magazine all-American at Granite Hills High. She played on U.S. youth national teams since she was 16. She was a four-year starter at Stanford. Spilger is proud of the green shoelaces she wears to promote the eco-friendly organization she founded. But after going 21-1-1 and being eliminated by eventual champion Portland in a penalty shootout of the NCAA quarterfinals, Stanford went 10-9-2 in her senior season and exited in the first round. “A frustrating year,” Spilger says. “I kind of was done with soccer. I feel like I had a bad breakup with soccer after my senior year.” And for 21¦2 years she played little outside the occasional pickup game or co-ed rec league. Then she watched the 2006 World Cup, watched French midfield maestro Zinedine Zidane work his magic, watched “Zizou” put Brazil under his spell in an epic quarterfinal victory. “It was inspiring,” Spilger says. “I fell in love with soccer all over again. After watching Zidane play, I couldn't wait to touch the ball again.” So the World Cup sucked her back into the sport.

Spilger is one of 72 women who will be at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista as part of a four-day combine for Women's Professional Soccer, the new league that will launch next spring in eight cities. The Chula Vista event is one of two invitation-only combines (the other is next week in Florida) for coaches to evaluate talent ahead of the Jan. 16 draft. You can spot Spilger as the 5-foot-6 central defender with brown hair and actress looks who has an affinity for sneaking forward and scoring goals. Or you can look at her shoe laces. They're green. Spilger is blessed with a rich vein of family athleticism (her father and grandfather played basketball at San Diego State), but she also got a conscience in the deal. She leans on both, figuring the former can provide a platform for the latter. Armed with an undergraduate degree in civil and environmental engineering and a master's in construction engineering management, Spilger founded GreenLaces earlier this year as a way to link her two passions. The premise is for athletes to make an eco-promise – to take shorter showers, to unplug electronics when not in use, to swear off Styrofoam cups – and seal it by wearing green shoe laces in their sneakers or soccer cleats. “To show,” as the GreenLaces Web site (www.greenlaces.org) says, “that you are a fan of the planet.” So far Spilger has signed up 50 elite athletes from eight countries, including two dozen Olympians from the Beijing Games. GreenLaces also sponsors projects that incorporate green messages into something as mundane as drills at youth soccer practice. Not exactly your typical pro athlete. “I've had a life outside soccer,” says Spilger, 26, who lived briefly in Italy, spent last year playing pro soccer in Sweden and has worked at an Internet start-up as well as an energy services company. “Leveraging soccer to create a greater good is what I'm excited about. Good athletes are icons in every corner of the world, so if we're going to attack a global problem, let's use existing global social structures. “It's really easy. We're not asking (pro) athletes to bike and get rid of their Hummers. Just take shorter showers, or something. It's green within your means. We're not asking you to live in trees.” Spilger lives in what she describes as a “mansion” in San Francisco's Marina district. Seven others live there as well. They have a compost pit. They recycle everything. She pitched WPS on GreenLaces after arriving at the league's San Francisco offices on a skateboard. Her personal eco-promise: I, Natalie Spilger, promise to never purchase a non-reusable plastic water bottle, unless in an emergency situation. Spilger attended a regional WPS combine earlier this year with about 30 players. By the end of the weekend, she had convinced about one-third of them to wear the green laces which, of course, are made from “100 percent, post-consumer recycled plastic and packaged sustainably.” She's hoping for a similar conversion rate in Chula Vista this week. The genesis of GreenLaces was a speech she heard from famed environmentalist Paul Hawken at a 2007 conference in Chicago for green building. It was a Zidane moment for her. “I felt really inspired that I liked our planet and I wanted to do my part,” Spilger says. “I started thinking about being an athlete and what sort of people should be stepping up . . . I decided I didn't just want green buildings. I wanted green minds.”

MANDY CLEMENS (UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO HS/SANTA CLARA UNI./SAN JOSE CYBERRAYS)

RACHEL BUEHLER (TORREY PINES HS/STANFORD UNIVERSITY)

USA: LALOR, MACMILLAN, BUEHLER, CLEMENS, SCHMIT, WOZNUK

MEXICO: QUINNONES

New coach Pia Sundhage announced her 18-player roster yesterday. The roster for China includes three newcomers, all 22 or younger: Amy Rodriguez, Tobin Heath and Torrey Pines High alum and San Diego Surf product Rachel Buehler. ..“It's such a great feeling to actually be on this team now,” said Buehler, 22, who is a veteran of U.S. youth teams and was a star defender at Stanford. It's always been my dream – that's why you play on those youth teams. You hope that you will finally break through, and it happened.” ...Buehler has 11 caps with the full national team. Before this year, she had none. ..“If you look at Rachel, she's one of the toughest players I've ever seen,” Sundhage said. “It doesn't matter who she's playing against . . . She doesn't have that experience compared with the other ones, but sometimes it's good to have someone who just gets the job done.”

Rachel Buehler (Stanford/Torrey Pines HS) Buehler earned her first cap on March 5 against China in the opening round of the 2008 Algarve Cup. U.S. National Teams: One of four players on the WC roster that were part of the U-19 National team that won inaugural 2002 FIFA U-19 World Championship in Canada … A four-year member of the U-19 WNT pool … Started all five games at the CONCACAF Qualifying tournament in Canada, playing every minute while scoring two goals with one assist … Was part of the 2002 CONCACAF Qualifying Tournament in Tobago, where she played in one match and helped the USA qualify … Second on the team with 24 career caps at the U-19 level.

High School: Attended University High School in San Diego, Calif. ... Named San Diego Soccer Player of the Year and All-America by both Umbro and Parade Magazine.

2006-Named to Top Drawer Soccer's third team All-Rookie squad ...

Named to Fall 2006 Academic All-Mountain West Conference team .

RACHEL BUELHER (TORREY PINES HIGH SCHOOL/STANFORD UNIVERSITY)/BARONS MVP

MEGAN KAKADELAS(LA COSTA CANYON HIGH SCHOOL/SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA-SANTA CLARA)

CARRIE SCHMIT (GROSSMONT HIGH SCHOOL/UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS)

JAMIE KLAGES (CORONADO HIGH SCHOOL'UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA)

ALI HAWKINS (LA JOLLA COUNTRY DAY/UNI. OF NORTH CAROLINA)

L: JENNIFER GRASSO (BONITA VISTA HS/CAL STATE DOMINGUEZ HILLS-DIVISION II PLAYER OF THE YEAR)

M: RACHEL COHEN (TORREY PINES HIGH SCHOOL/DUKE UNIVERSITY)

Courtesy: Duke Sports Information/ Release: 11/21/2006/ Courtesy: Duke Photography

DURHAM, N.C.: For the second year in a row Duke University senior Rachel-Rose Cohen of the Duke University Women's Soccer team has been selected ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America, which was released on Tuesday by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). Last season, Cohen earned third team ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America honors and this year she was named to the second team. The 5-4 defender owns a 3.81 grade point average and is majoring in biological anthropology and anatomy. Cohen is a three-time ACC Honor Roll selection and has made the Dean's list at Duke five different times.

Feb. 4, 2009

SAN DIEGO, Calif.

R: Elissa Magracia (Bonita Vista) Elissa Magracia was named a Freshman All-American as well as being named to the All-Far West freshman team.