Bolick finds

success at CSU
From staff reports

CHARLESTON, S.C. — When Brittany Bolick, a 2005 graduate of Watauga High, made the trek from the mountains of Boone to the Lowcountry of Charleston to play soccer for Charleston Southern University, all she wanted was the chance to be a regular contributor to the team.

Her performance with the Pioneers had caught the eye of Charleston Southern head coach Eric Terrill, and deservingly so. Bolick’s high school honors including captaining the squad to a 16-3-1 record in her senior year of 2005, helping guide the program to four playoff appearances in her four years at Watauga and being named to the All-North Carolina First Team in her senior year.

Terrill also knew that Bolick would be a solid contributor to the team as a result of the time she spent at Watauga. The Bucs’ coach had recruited Brittany’s teammate at Watauga and current Buccaneer Briana Murphy the year before, and had been impressed by Murphy’s winning mentality. Terrill had seen a similar mentality in Bolick in the recruiting process, a mentality he attributes to the coaching of Watauga head coach Doug Kidd.

“We knew that she was going to be very well coached coming in,” Terrill said.

Immediately, however, Bolick learned that she would not only be called upon to be so much more than a regular contributor to the Buccaneers, but also to play in a different position than she was accustomed to in high school. Injuries and graduation had left a void at Charleston Southern at the outer defensive back position, forcing Terrill to test out the accomplished central midfielder at a new spot on the field.

Bolick took little time to successfully adjust. In fact, Terrill was so impressed with Bolick’s athleticism and adaptability that he inserted Bolick into the starting defense for the team’s 2005 opener at Wyoming.

“Brittany probably is the best athlete on the team,” Terrill said. “We felt like (she) could be plugged in in a variety of different places.”

From there, Bolick would find a permanent home on defense, playing and starting in the back in each of the 58 games Charleston Southern has played in the last two years. If Bolick is able to continue to play and start in every game in 2008, she would break the program records for games played in and started (both 76) if the team plays in more than 19 games next season.

Bolick credits her hard work in practice for making Terrill’s decision on who to start in defense such an easy one over the course of the past three years.

“Starting and playing every game is awesome,” Bolick said. “But more than anything, I want coach to have to put me on the field, to have to play me.”

By all accounts, Bolick had her finest season in 2007, and by no coincidence, so did her team. The Buccaneers made a dramatic improvement last year, rising from a 5-10-3 record and an eighth place Big South finish in 2006, to a 12-6-1 record and a second place finish in ’07, defying preseason predictions that foresaw a seventh place finish in the Big South for the team.

Along the way, Bolick and the Bucs accomplished a litany of honors. For the team, honors included tying program records for the longest winning streak in a season — a six game streak that boosted Charleston Southern’s record from 4-4 to 10-4 — and for most wins in a single season.

Bolick, meanwhile, was selected to the Big South’s All-Academic Team (she currently holds a 3.90 GPA) and was selected Big South First Team All-Conference by the conference’s coaches and sports information directors.

Terrill saw the makings of this outstanding season from Bolick in what would be one of the team’s more disappointing performances, a spring game loss to South Carolina in which Terrill says the team was “hammered.”

After the loss, Terrill saw an immediate change in Bolick, who quickly embraced the added responsibilities of her new position, allowing Charleston Southern to shut out both of its Lowcountry rivals, The Citadel and The College of Charleston, in its next two games.

“Brittany takes every negative situation personally and has a determination to make sure she is successful,” Terrill said. “She focused herself to make sure that what happened against South Carolina would never happen again.

I never thought about taking Brittany out of the center after that game, ever.”

Bolick, meanwhile, credits the coming together of a complete defensive unit, featuring both newcomers as well as veteran returnees, for her ability to settle into the new defensive position as well as for the team’s overall defensive success on the season.

“At first we struggled just a little bit, probably because we were so strong offensively,” she said. “And we knew once we got into conference those teams were going to be really good offensively and defensively.
“But we started communicating a lot better throughout the year. Defense is all about communication… when you learn how players are going to play, things get much easier.”

Communication shouldn’t be an issue for the Bucs at any spot on the field next season, as the team will not lose any players to graduation before the 2008 campaign gets underway. Bolick and five other seniors will lead a CSU team that will be projected to finish in the upper echelon of the Big South and that will seek to accomplish a program first, a conference championship.

“We would love to win the regular season,” Bolick admits, “But more than that we would like to earn as much respect for the team in the conference as we can.”