Olympia’s Jenna Killman named The Olympian’s All-Area girls soccer player of the year

Tamara Liska had been an assistant soccer coach at Capital High School with only a passing knowledge of Olympia’s roster when she took over as the Bears’ head coach last spring.

Jenna Killman, Olympia’s senior midfielder and forward, impressed her in offseason gym and weight training workouts with her leadership and work ethic. Finally, summer practices began.

“I was like, ‘Oh, hello!’ ” Liska remembers. “Her footwork was amazing. I’d seen her energy level in the gym, but seeing her ball skills was impressive.”

Killman, who led the Bears to a district playoff berth by scoring 16 goals and adding four assists, is The Olympian’s 2016 All-Area girls soccer player of the year. She says it’s a good thing for her athletic career that she was gifted with those particular skills.

She tried basketball and gymnastics, but gave up other sports to focus on soccer in the eighth grade.

“I have really bad hand-eye coordination,” Killman said with a laugh. “It’s always been better for me to have a ball at my feet.”

Better for her, but not for her opponents. Both Liska, and Killman’s club coach, Seth Spidahl of Washington Premier FC, praise her ability to combine speed and ball skills with what Spidahl calls a “hard to teach” soccer IQ.

“She sees movement all over the field and knows what needs to happen next,” Liska said.

“Most goals in soccer are scored from inside the 18-yard box,” Spidahl said. “Jenna has a good sense of how to find that 1-yard gap that allows her to get off a quality shot. She’s a hard player to control all game.”

Sometimes, she can’t be controlled at all. In a game against Graham-Kapowsin, Killman — who was also named the Class 4A South Puget Sound League’s most valuable offensive player in Olympia’s first season in the league — scored four times.

“I like taking people on, and I do think I have a good sense of time and space, where people need to be,” she said.

Her accomplishments and potential didn’t go unnoticed at the highest level of intercollegiate soccer. She’ll play Division I ball next fall at the University of New Mexico, a Mountain West Conference school that just completed a second consecutive winning season under coach Heather Dyche.

Everything lined up for Killman on her official visit to Albuquerque.

“I fell in love with the coach, she’s such a rock, and the atmosphere of the program,” Killman said. “A lot of the girls who will be coming in with me were visiting the same weekend and we bonded. It’ll be nice to get out of Washington, too, and have a fresh start.”

Liska and Spidahl agree that Killman can succeed in college by continuing the growth of her already sound game.

“She’ll just need to work at being physically stronger,” Liska said. “She has the skills.”

“The game is going to get faster,” Spidahl said. “She’s a great athlete with a great attitude, though, so she’ll need to learn to do the things she does now at a faster and higher level.”

Both of Killman’s coaches come back time and again to her mental approach to the sport and to being a part of a team.

“I’ve only gotten to coach her this one year,” Liska said. “But I’ve seen her leadership skills increase. She’s more confident in being a vocal leader. She pushes her teammates and they push her. The upcoming players get to see what she’s done and how she’s done it to reach the level she has.”

“She’s a great soccer player, but an even better person,” Spidahl said.

Killman, who plans to major in either business or engineering at New Mexico, credits her coaches for giving her instruction in more than just soccer.

“Seth teaches us we’re people before we’re players,” she said. “And the Olympia coaching staff supports me and my teammates so well. I wouldn’t trade this past season for anything.”

This story was originally published November 14, 2016 at 7:08 PM with the headline "Olympia’s Jenna Killman named The Olympian’s All-Area girls soccer player of the year."