Cunningham caps memorable run at St. Charles East
Darcy Cunningham has a very good soccer memory. She can tell you things about her first soccer match - when she was 4-years-old and she scored 7 goals for her light-blue shirted team. She still has her cleats from the game too.
Cunningham has spent the last four years creating memories for St. Charles East girls soccer fans with one solid season after another. And though her career is now a successful remembrance, the sense you get in looking at those years as body of work is of excellence.
And Cunningham hardly sat back in her final season in the Saints program, helping propel her team to the Class 3A Schaumburg sectional semifinals by scoring 8 goals and adding a team-high 16 assists. Those numbers and her all-around play on St. Charles East's front line earn her this year's role as Captain of the Daily Herald Tri-Cities All-Area Soccer Team.
"It's always been soccer," Cunningham said. "The game has been my life. I've grown as a person because of the game."
In particular, Cunningham was talking about her growth as a player with an independent streak - she used the word "stubborn."
"I didn't want to listen to coaches or even my parents telling me what to do, because I felt I was right," Cunningham said. "I used to be very stubborn, but I have reached a point where I realize the coaches have been right."
Coaches have a lot of good things to say about Cunningham as well, especially Saints coach Paul Jennison.
"She's very physically gifted," Jennison said. "But she makes sure that's not what her game is built around. Her tactical knowledge and movement are excellent and she's got a tremendous work to go with an incredible desire to get better. She just lives and breathes the game."
Cunningham credits Jennison with the key move in her career from playing as a winger to being a central striker. While her assist totals have always been strong - she finished her career with 41 goals and 48 assists - she proved she was a central striker in her junior and senior seasons.
"My freshman and sophomore year, I had no idea what I was doing in the middle," Cunningham said. "I knew I was a good outside player, and that's what I wanted to play. (Jennison) saw what I could be and he put me in the middle."
The central role suited Cunningham, whose speed and instincts made her a true penalty area poacher, though Jennison now had the tactical flexibility to move Cunningham outside, if needed, to unbalance the opposition.
"I grew so much as a player playing through the middle," Cunningham said. "People don't realize how difficult the position is, the runs that you have to make and the strength it takes. Those were things I had to learn, and I am grateful (Jennison) saw that in me."
For his part, Jennison said he has no doubt which position is Cunningham's best on the field.
"It's 100 percent in the middle," he said. "But it was a matter of having other players accept roles in that rotation that made us successful. It wasn't just a matter of putting her in the middle and telling her to go. (Cunningham) is a very selfless player, and she was excited to play any role in the team that made the players around her better."
In addition to the positional switch, high school soccer provided another area of growth for Cunningham - the role of being a team leader. In years to come, when forward-playing Saints like sophomore Hannah Kolb and freshman Chantel Carranza finish their already sterling careers, they will remember having Cunningham as a teammate.
"In club soccer, you don't have that many players looking up to you," Cunningham said. "In high school soccer, you have to learn to be a leader and a role model."
In her four years with the Saints, Cunningham saw her high school rise from being 13-7-4 to a junior season which finished 19-5-5 and in which the team finished second in the Class 3A tournament. This year, the Saints started with a school-record 15 straight wins to open the season and finished 21-2-1.
"I'm happy that I've been part of the group that got St. Charles East girls soccer back on the map," Cunningham said. "I'm happy that I was able to play in a state championship game. It was one of the best experiences of my life."
Cunningham said she could feel the culture changing within the Saints team unit through her years in high school, something she expects will continue in years to come, especially with 14 varsity players returning in 2016.
"My freshman year, when we would play teams like Waubonsie Valley or Barrington or Neuqua Valley, I was scared to death because I thought we'd get our butts handed to us," Cunningham said. "Now, I had all the confidence in the world going against them with our team, that we could beat teams like that."
Cunningham's high school career ended when the Saints lost to Conant in the Schaumburg sectional, and she is now preparing for her freshman season at Washington University in St. Louis, where she plans to major in biology in the hope of eventually becoming an orthopedic surgeon.
As she prepares to head to college, Cunningham will carry her memories with her, the ones that extend to that initial youth game more than a decade ago. She's made a number of memories for those who remain, even if they'll never have the chance to play soccer with her.
"I've been going to the Saints soccer camps since I was in fifth grade," Cunningham said. "I went back to the camp and it was weird seeing all these young players, knowing I won't be a part of it any more. But at the same time, St. Charles East is back on the map and people recognize who we are. I think I got all out of St. Charles East soccer I could have in four years."