One national team is just not enough for the Williams sisters

One pair of sisters, two national soccer teams.

That’s the status of Anaiah and Cambria Williams, respectively a senior and a sophomore at Glenbard North High School in Carol Stream.

Both central defenders, Anaiah Williams has 8 caps, or game appearances, with the United States Soccer Under-17 Women’s National Team and has been on national teams since the U15 level.

Cambria Williams was called into her most recent U15 National Team training camp this summer at the U.S. Soccer National Training Center in Fayetteville, Georgia. She now is on the U16 squad. Her first U16 camp in Fayetteville came Sept. 1-8.

Cambria’s squad has 24 players selected nationwide. Anaiah’s U17 team rosters 20.

“I think it’s amazing,” Cambria said. “I mean, just this opportunity, not a lot of people have it. For us to both be able to do it, and I really look up to her — her being able to do it, I can see what she’s gone through and learn from that as well.”

Both sisters have opted to go the club soccer path with Eclipse Select, though they both were sprinters on Glenbard North’s girls track team.

Cambria will continue to run for the Panthers while pursuing soccer. Anaiah is graduating high school after this semester to get an early start at Penn State University, one of about 50 colleges interested in her soccer skills, she said.

Anaiah has played soccer for as long as she can remember. In all that time, due to their age difference the sisters have played on the same team only one season, last spring.

“We both are center backs,” Anaiah Williams said. “I think she’s a lot more aggressive, so we kind of balance each other out. I’m kind of like the calmer one and use my head a little more — not that she doesn’t, but I’m kind of the calmer one and she’s going to just step in and I can cover it.”

With the 17U call-up in July, Anaiah played at an international training camp in Japan.

“Had the best sushi ever,” she said.

In October she’ll play in the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup in Morocco. Soccer has taken her to Costa Rica, the Netherlands, Spain and “all over stateside,” she said.

The sisters appear to be best friends. However, Cambria admits to feeling slight pressure.

“I do,” she said. “It’s not as much pressure as it is just wanting to live up to the standard, so I guess it kind of is pressure. Just wanting to show that I’m just as good as the rest of them.”

“Them” includes not only Anaiah but their father, Robert Williams, who played college football at Auburn and Massachusetts; and their aunt, Ella Masar, a former professional soccer player recently inducted into the University of Illinois Hall of Fame.

In reality, it seems Anaiah Williams is about the best soccer-playing big sister one could want.

“I think being able to grow up with someone only 22 months apart from you in the same sport has been such an honor and a blessing,” Anaiah said.

“We get to push each other in training and I always have a built-in training partner, so that’s really awesome, really cool.”

Paving the ‘Way’

On Sept. 12, Northern Illinois University dedicated the road west of Huskie Stadium in honor of former Arlington High School graduate and Prospect resident George Bork, who died this May at 84.

“George Bork Way” is the first street on the DeKalb campus named after an NIU alumnus.

“It was a wonderful honor and ceremony. The Bork family really enjoyed it,” said Prospect High School graduate Mike Korcek, NIU sports information director emeritus.

Bork did a lot of things first for the Huskies.

Named in 1996 to NIU’s “All-Century Team” for both football and basketball, Bork was the first quarterback in NCAA history to pass for more than 3,000 yards. He did that for the 10-0 Huskies in 1963.

Bork set at least 16 national records during that season and still holds numerous NIU passing records, including those for career completion percentage, single-season touchdowns and single-game touchdown passes and completions.

The first NIU player to receive votes for the Heisman Trophy, Bork also was the first NIU player inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, in 1999. The school inducted Bork into its athletic hall of fame in 1983 and retired his No. 11 jersey in 1996.

He was an All-American in both football and basketball.

Following Bork’s 1963 season, NIU applied for University Division (FBS) status, and broke ground on Huskie Stadium — first known as “The House That Bork Built.”

doberhelman@dailyherald.com