Boshers excited to take her place in Jacobs Hall of Fame
Tiffany Boshers turned 30 years old not so long ago, and that's when she figured it was about time to take a step back.
At 30, you say?
Well, to that point Boshers had continued to play soccer at a high level - the professional level - and anyone who plays competitively for as long as Boshers has knows when it's time to dial it back a notch.
That's not to say the Jacobs graduate hunt up her soccer shoes and headed to a lawn chair. Not even close. But the soccer Boshers plays today is more of the weeknight local variety, still competitive, but not as physically tasking as what she'd played her entire career.
And on the way to that weeknight soccer schedule, Boshers got to see the world.
The 2000-01 Daily Herald Fox Valley Female Athlete of the Year didn't stick around long after graduating from Jacobs, although her family still calls Algonquin home, and Tiffany will make a return trip to the alma mater next weekend when she joins Johnny Moran, Sam Sheperd, Scott Allen, Lisa (McKay) Kimpel and Tiffany Nelson as the newest inductees to the Jacobs Athletic Hall of Fame.
The ceremony will take place Friday, Sept. 19 in the high school auditorium and the inductees will be introduced at halftime of the Golden Eagles' football game that night against Grayslake Central.
"It's so cool," said Boshers, who was informed of her induction via Facebook when she was finishing up a stint playing professionally for the Newcastle Jets in Australia. "It's such an honor. You go back and start thinking about the high school memories and where it's all taken me."
Where it's all taken Boshers, who scored 84 goals in her 3-plus soccer seasons at Jacobs, is literally around the world, not to mention a good portion of the United States.
After graduating from Jacobs Boshers, whose family moved from California to Algonquin when she was 6, played four years of soccer on a full scholarship at Baylor University in Texas. Then it was back home, where she played some semipro soccer, but not for long because, "I hate the cold," she says.
After spending time in Austin, Texas as well as in California, Boshers got an opportunity to play professionally in Australia.
"It was amazing," she said. "It was always a dream to play professionally overseas and I loved it. I loved the beach, I loved the people and I loved the program. It was an awesome life-changing experience."
A touch of irony followed Boshers, a health fitness studies major in college, down under. Just as she missed the final part of her senior season of high school soccer with an ACL injury, she suffered a foot injury in her final game in Australia. Back home, she found herself icing the foot in the snow. Her parents, Bo and Gloria, had begun traveling the world with their ministry, Lead 22, which takes mission trips around the glove mentoring youth leaders, so the bell was ringing on the final chapter of Tiffany's residency in Illinois.
"It was that time," she said. "I had been moving every six months and I just stopped. I said 'OK, I'm 30.' "
She thought about moving back to California but went on a visit to see friends in Texas first. Long story short, she used her connections to land a job with the Womble Co., an oil and gas company, and has been living in Houston since.
And of course, the three-sport athlete in high school who was a defensive specialist for Jacobs' sectional championship volleyball teams and an MVP of the Golden Eagles' girls basketball teams, for which she scored 1,077 career points, quickly found some soccer leagues to get involved with, as well as getting involved in crossfit training.
"I'm playing three nights a week now, mostly in guys' leagues, one of which has a lot of former Division I players in it," said Boshers, who led Baylor in scoring her senior season. "It's a totally different competitive level but it's fun. At the end of the day I still want to compete."
Along the way Boshers, who will be introduced at the HOF ceremony by retired Jacobs boys basketball coach Jim Hinkle (someone get me a video of that, please), also found her soul mate and got married. She didn't have to look far, tying the knot with Landan Webster, one of her best friends from about the age of 5 on. The couple was married in Montego Bay, Jamaica July 26. "We were best friends for life then we got together," says Boshers, adding the couple currently spends their time commuting between Dallas, where Landan lives and works, and Houston to see each other.
Coming home to be inducted into the Jacobs Hall of Fame is definitely an event Boshers is excited for.
"Your potential to do anything starts in high school," she said. "We had such an awesome high school soccer team. We had five Division I players on that team."
That included Kristin Heil (Missouri) and Jenny Heil (Colorado), who Boshers competed against in Big 12 play, as well as Shelly Hecht and Liz Kwasegroh.
And one 5-foot-4 dynamite of a soccer player and person who gets to come home for a weekend to a more-than-deserving celebration of what she gave to the Jacobs athletic program, as well as the entire Fox Valley community.
jradtke@dailyherald.com