PhillySoccerNews.com: Fitting In
By Charles Cuttone || PhillySoccerNews.com
Allison Falk might best be remembered as the first player to score a goal in Women’s Professional Soccer. She did it in the league opener last season, playing for the Los Angeles Sol, but that was a year and a coast ago. Falk, a defender by trade, was traded to the Philadelphia Independence before the Sol folded.
“It’s definitely a transition,” said Falk on a cold windy day at the team’s United Sports Training Center practice facility. “Even just going from California to Pennsylvania, I am a California girl. But I have definitely loved it so far.”
A Stanford grad, Falk said the biggest adjustment has not been the weather, especially since the winter temperatures have started abating and the snow has melted.
“It’s just getting used to a whole new team and a whole new coaching staff and playing with different girls out there on the field,” she said.
Falk played in 16 of the Sol’s 20 games last season. The first goal in the team’s season-opening 2-0 win over the Washington Freedom, was her only point of the season. The team went wire to wire in first place, before falling in the championship game to Sky Blue FC.
“It definitely was disappointing, we couldn’t get to win the championship in the last game,” she said. “We had a great year. We only lost 3-4 games all year.”
Perhaps more disappointing for Falk was that the Sol folded after the season, although she had already been traded to the Independence, along with goalkeeper Val Henderson, in exchange for Philly’s first round pick (5th overall) and its third round pick (22nd overall) in the 2010 WPS Draft.
“You don’t want to see a team not succeed in the league,” she said. “We have other great strong teams, with good owners and strong backing. Hopefully they’ll come back.”
Falk thinks the Independence is starting to gel, especially after all the national team players arrived in camp last week. “I really think we are starting to feel each other out, and how everyone is playing and getting a sense of where we are. We had people coming in gradually, so we don’t really have quite the whole team feel yet. It’s going to be a challenge.”
At Stanford, the Pleasanton, Calif. native was honored the by Pac-10 Conference in each of her four seasons. She was named to the league All-Freshman team, then in succeeding seasons, was a second team, honorable mention and second team selection.
A four year letter-winner at San Ramon Valley High school, Falk was the California High School Sports North Coast Section Player of the Year in 2004 and led her school back-to-back league championships in 2003 and 2004, as well as the NCS finals in `04. She also won two letters in track. While she graduated from Stanford with a degree in American studies, her passions are outdoors, including wakeboarding and waterskiing.
While she’s at home on the soccer field getting photographed by sports photographers, you might also find her on the other side of a camera lens.
“I took three years of photography,” she said. “I studied abroad in Florence my junior year in college and I took black and white photography there. It was exciting to capture the cities and towns there.”
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