Grasso continues to score big for UL

The UL-Lafayette soccer team is on a roll.

The Ragin’ Cajuns are 5-2-1 on the young soccer year – an early season run that includes wins over Southern Miss, Nicholls and Northern Illinois.

One of the key ingredients in the team’s recipe is a Houma native who is hungry to lead her university to the Sun Belt Conference Championship.

Vandebilt graduate and local striker Kimberly Grasso continues to be a force for the Ragin’ Cajuns in her junior season with the team.

Through eight matches, Grasso has scored three goals – including one game-winner. Those numbers put Grasso ahead of her pace from last season when she scored five goals in 19 games and was one of the best offensive players on a team that went 9-8-2 and showed marked improvement.

The increase in output is by design. Grasso said she entered the offseason telling herself that she’d step up in 2015 and take a leadership role within her team.

“Being an upperclassman and a leader on a team is great,” Grasso said. “I try to motivate the team when needed, but I like to lead by example – especially like during drills at practice or on the field itself during games.”

Folks in the Houma-Thibodaux area have grown accustomed to hearing Grasso’s name affiliated with soccer success.

As a striker at Vandebilt, Grasso was masterful – one of the most gifted offensive players in the state of Louisiana for several seasons. With a midfield that contained Grasso, Makelle Pena and Meghan Philp (both of whom signed collegiate scholarships, as well), the Vandebilt offense was dominant for several seasons. The Lady Terriers would routinely score four or five goals in a match – if not more.

Grasso was a huge part of that offensive success. She earned First-Team All-State honors for three-straight seasons. Her speed, goal scoring ability and touch in the midfield were driving forces that helped lead the Lady Terriers to four-straight State Runner-Up finishes in Division II postseason competition.

“Kimberly was a great, great player here,” Vandebilt coach Philip Amedee said last season when asked about his now-departed striker. “She was very versatile and was one of those players that was both very talented, but also very coachable. In between the white lines, she always gave you everything she had and played as hard as she could every time we stepped onto the field.”

Because of her prep success, Grasso was recruited heavily by several schools upon her graduation from Vandebilt. She said she chose Lafayette because they were one of the first schools to offer her a spot – that and she liked coach Scot Wieland’s style.

Wieland probably doesn’t mind Grasso’s style, either. It’s one that keeps the Ragin’ Cajuns in position to score goals.

Since joining the team, Grasso has been an instant-impact performer. She started 16 matches as a freshman in 2013 and played 1,371 minutes for a team that finished 8-7-3.

As a sophomore, Grasso was even better and was tied for third on UL-Lafayette’s team in goals. This year, she’s on fire and is undoubtedly one of the team’s best players – if not one of the best offensive threats in the entire Sun Belt.

The Ragin’ Cajuns have followed Grasso’s lead and are off to one of their best starts in school history.

“The season right now is going great,” Grasso said. “We start conference play in two weeks, and I think we are prepared for it. I think we will be able to keep our momentum going forward.”

But even for the marked success that she’s had at the collegiate level, Grasso said she’s kept her eyes on the future and continued growth. She said that she works every day to polish her offensive craft. She’s tied for the Ragin’ Cajuns lead in goals scored at press-time, but isn’t satisfied. She said she works at practice every day to improve her skillset so that she can put the ball into the back of the net even more often.

“I am still working on trying to play quicker because sometimes I wait too long to play a ball and then it might get taken,” Grasso said. “I’ve also been trying to shoot the ball more because many times I think I need that perfect touch to shoot it, but that’s not always the case.”

And for the biggest goals of all? Grasso has two.

She said that in the immediate future, she wants to help lead the Ragin’ Cajuns to a Sun Belt Conference Championship, which would mean an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.

We all want to win the conference tournament,” Grasso said. “We are such a great and dangerous team, and we have so much talent. I know we can do it.”

And the distant future, the Houma native wants to continue to thrive so that she can try to play the game she loves professionally.

Grasso said she is majoring in Speech Language Pathology – a major that she hopes to turn into a career someday. But the soccer standout hopes that career doesn’t start immediately after graduation, because she hopes that time will be when she begins a long, fruitful professional career.

“I would love to continue to keep playing after college,” Grasso said. “It would definitely be a dream come true. I love playing the game, and I definitely don’t want it to end.”

Kim Grasso