Everything Tatiana Ariza did on a soccer field looked effortless.
That's not to say it was easy; the hours and hours of work, the balls kicked when no one else was watching, the commitment to greatness that often tricks folks into ascribing God-given talent when the explanation of hard work doesn't suffice. Nobody works that hard, right?
But where others dug into the pitch at Morgan Brothers Soccer Field during the course of a match, Ariza glided, the ball stuck to her magically until she saw a crease no one else could see, an angle only she could attack. It never looked like she put much on the ball when she put it on net, yet it exploded off her foot and past astonished opposing keepers more than 50 times during her four seasons in Clarksville. She had pace. She had touch. She saw everything before everyone else, which was wildly unfair given how much faster she was, how she had an extra gear blessed to players of world-class caliber. She had those gifts; she honed those gifts. And she turned herself into the closest thing Austin Peay soccer has seen to a deity.
Tatiana Ariza was a world-class player, there is no doubt about that. The list of Austin Peay athletes who have competed in the Olympics begins and ends with Tatiana and her twin sister Natalia, who competed for their native Colombia at the 2012 Olympic Games in London; Natalia shouldn't be too far behind her into the Hall of Fame and we'll be sure she receives her flowers then. But it's undeniable that Tatiana had the standout stats that set her apart from anyone else in Austin Peay history, and indeed made her one of the best in Ohio Valley Conference history too.
The list of things that only Tatiana was able to do at Austin Peay is significant in its own right. She is the only Austin Peay player to…
- Earn league Freshman of the Year honors
- Earn league Player of the Year honors
- Score more than 50 career goals (she has 24 more than No. 2 on the career goals list)
- Earn four straight All-League honors
- Score more than 10 game-winning goals in her career (she had 18)
- Earn NSCAA First-Team All-Region honors
- Record more than 20 assists in her Austin Peay career (she had 24)
- Earn NSCAA All-Region honors twice (first-team in 2010, second-team in 2012)
She ended her career with 54 goals and 24 assists—both Austin Peay records, along with her 132 career points (and yes, she's also the only player in program history with more than 100 career points). She also missed four games while representing her country on the international stage in 2010 and 2012—the years she earned Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year, respectively. To underscore how brilliantly dominant she could be, she didn't even have to play a full season to be among the league's best players.
All of that serves to illustrate what she could do and did do whenever she stepped on the field. Only a handful of OVC players ever notched 100 or more points in their careers; Ariza is on that list for a reason.
What it doesn't quantify is the fear she struck in the hearts and minds of those she played against. To face a team with Tatiana Ariza a threat to score any time the ball got to her foot was to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that goals were coming. Sometimes they were spectacular. Sometimes they were workmanlike in their normalcy. Sometimes they came from other Govs who benefitted from both their own talents and operating in the orbit of Ariza's talents. Her career just so happened to coincide with four of the six best goal-scoring seasons in Austin Peay history, and she wasn't just a one-man band; her presence gave Emily Perkins (seven goals in 2011 and 2012), Andy Quiceno (six goals in 2012) and Gina Fabbro (seven goals in 2013) more space to maneuver and more freedom to create, with so much attention being drawn by both Ariza sisters.
But you had to give all your attention to Tatiana, if you were an opposing defense. She commanded it, no matter how good the rest of her teammates were. To forget her for a moment on the pitch was an invitation for pain.
And opponents tried EVERYTHING to throw her off her game. At 5-3, she was not a towering presence on the field and physicality was deployed against her at every opportunity to discourage her from mixing it up with taller, more solidly-built players in the box, in the midfield, at every point. Teams hounded her to be sure she couldn't get the ball in space, because space with the ball on Tatiana Ariza's foot meant death for opponents.
That all this came from a joyful, soft-spoken kid who never retaliated, never said a cross word and never took the bait from any opponent foolish enough to try and get a rise out of her during her Austin Peay career. The play did all the talking for Tatiana Ariza. It said more than words ever could.
