Hodel Leads W. Soccer in One Final Charge

Two seasons of soccer in college. Three seasons of soccer, two of tennis and one of basketball in high school. That doesn’t sound like a bad athletic career. But those are just the years Katie Hodel has been the captain of her teams.

When Hodel, a senior in her second year as co-captain of the women’s soccer team, leads the Crimson onto the field for the final time tomorrow at Columbia, she will do so in every sense of the word.

Breaking Out

Perhaps not surprisingly, Hodel has always stood out as a model for her teammates—even in high school, when word of her talent preceded her arrival at preseason.

“She handled herself with amazing grace and poise and interacted well with all of the upperclassmen,” says Leslie Anderson, who was the varsity coach at Pattonville High School in Maryland Heights, Mo. for each of Hodel’s four seasons there. “In a way, [Hodel] became an inspiration and a leader even as a freshman.

“I wouldn’t have put the pressure on her to be captain as a freshman because that just would have been a little too much, but as a sophomore, it was just a no-brainer because Katie leads by example and she did that from the very minute she set foot on the field.”

Among the Pattonville players, too, it was a forgone conclusion that Hodel would captain the team as a sophomore, according to Katie Sowers, who was a senior and Pattonville’s starting goalkeeper during Hodel’s sophomore year.

Despite the presence of such older players, Hodel excelled as captain.

“One of the things that is particularly difficult at the high school level is it’s very difficult for young women who are just a little past puberty to be leaders without being perceived as being unpleasant,” Anderson says. “On the high school level, because a lot of times these kids aren’t very sophisticated, it’s even harder, but Katie was so unwavering in her attitude.

“No matter what would happen on or off the field, she was always very positive and very hard-working.”

That dedication earned Hodel—whom Anderson calls the best player ever to play at Pattonville—the starting sweeper position for all four years of high school as well as numerous state and conference honors. But things would be different once she got to Cambridge—at least temporarily.

Starting From the Bottom

As a college freshman, Hodel saw limited time, appearing in just nine of Harvard’s games.

Yet by the end of the following year, Hodel had played in every game, earned a starting role, scored her first collegiate goal and been voted captain by her teammates. In the process, she had grown especially close to the class of 2002. Following her election, she sat down to talk with outgoing co-captains Caitlin Costello and Colleen Moore. The conversation still affects Hodel’s approach to leadership today.

“The thing they stressed the most was to just to be yourself because your teammates look at who they want as the captain and elect the person as they are, not the person that they want someone to be,” Hodel says.

Hodel took that advice and turned her own struggles as a freshman into a positive example for the younger players on the team.

Sophomore Rebecca Mildrew, for one, has been a productive player for the Crimson this year.

But she might not have played at all after seeing action in just five games during a frustrating freshman season had it not been for several conversations with Hodel.

“She’s able to know when you need to be talked to,” Mildrew says. “She was able to see that. Without [me] saying anything, she knew how I was feeling and reached out to me.

“She’s the one who made first contact,” Mildrew continues. “It’s just nice, too, knowing that she’s been through the same situation because she’s an unbelievable player and you don’t think of people like her not playing, but it’s nice to know that she was there, too. It gives you hope.”

But for Hodel, that’s just part of the job description.

“I felt like I was able to connect with them a little bit because I had had a similar experience,” Hodel says. “I came in here, didn’t get to play a whole lot, was disappointed, was questioning myself, my ability, like ‘do I really want to do this?’ And so I was able to talk to them and say, ‘O.K. Here’s what my situation was. Here’s how I looked at it, handled it. If you want to talk to me about it, please do.’ Hopefully that helps them a little bit.”

The Back-bone

This year, Hodel—a midfielder the past two seasons—has anchored the Harvard defense as a center back. It’s a role she took on at the beginning of the season, sacrificing opportunities to join the attack and learning a new position to solidify the team.

Yet Hodel’s teammates seem to have no trouble finding her, wherever she is on the field.

“It’s just unspoken,” sophomore goalkeeper Katie Shields says. “When something goes wrong—or even if things are going well—she’s the one everyone on the team looks to. It’s like, ‘So, Hodel, what do you think? Hodel, what do we do?’

“We’ve gone into many overtime periods this year and each time, you come into the huddle and you look around at all the faces. A lot of times, you’ll see people ready and intense, but her face—it’s almost on the verge of tears because she wants it so bad. That attitude sticks out.”

Yet Hodel doesn’t just command respect during games or at practice.

“Off the field, she’s kind of like our mother,” Shields adds.

Hodel doesn’t necessarily deny it.

“If you’re a senior, you’re a captain and you have freshmen on your team, they’re being thrown into this whole new experience,” Hodel says.

“They’re at college. They’re at Harvard. They’re in a situation where you just kind of have to be on the lookout for them, like how do they look like they’re doing? How do they look like they’re feeling [if] it’s their first midterm, first paper?”

That type of extra effort isn’t lost on the other players.

“It’s unique to find a player whose number one priority at all times is her teammates,” Mildrew explains. “That’s what has always made [Hodel] an exceptional leader.”

But for Hodel, leading is just an extension of her natural personality.

“I’ve never considered myself the most talented or most skilled person on the team, so I’ve always tried to be one of the hardest working,” she says. “I’ve just always believed if you have 23 people who are just working their butts off and just so committed to something and everyone wants it and is on the same page, that can do a lot.

“For me, leading is just playing the way that I like to play and hopefully people see that and feed off of it and take it and go from there.”

And it’s likely people will indeed continue to “go from there” as players like Mildrew broaden Hodel’s legacy by becoming starters, stars and captains and passing their wisdom on to future generations of Crimson players.

Of course, to the extent they do, they’ll just be doing what seems to come naturally to everyone—following Hodel’s lead.

—Staff writer Alan G. Ginsberg can be reached at aginsber@fas.harvard.edu.