Soccer team gets late addition in Notre Dame transfer
Thursday, August 2, 2012 | Soccer, Men's Swimming & Diving, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The Florida women's soccer team opened practice Wednesday, with Coach Becky Burleigh scheduled to debut the 2012 squad in just nine days with an Aug. 10 exhibition against UCF.
For UF soccer players and fans, the preseason is about anticipation.
Unless you're talking about this preseason, which Thursday became about fortifying the roster with a new addition. 
The Gators have added junior forward Adriana Leon, a transfer by way of Notre Dame, to the squad. The 5-foot-3 Leon (pictured left, No. 19) started 22 games over the last two season for the Irish and scored the winning goal in Notre Dame's 1-0 defeat of top-ranked Stanford in the 2010 NCAA championship game.
“This is pretty rare to have a player join us this late,” said Burleigh, set to start her 18th season with the Gators. “Actually, I don't think it's ever happened before.”
The circumstances are about to get even rarer.
After Leon, from Kings Point, Ontario, goes through some preseason conditioning with her new UF teammates, she'll leave the Gators for a few weeks to join a Canadian national team for Under-20 World Cup play in Japan.
She could miss as many as five regular-season games, but Burleigh is confident Leon still can help provide some offensive punch to a team that lost seniors Tahnai Annis and Lindsay Thompson, both of whom ended their careers ranked in the top 10 of UF's all-time points leaders and finished third and fifth, respectively, for the Gators in points last season.
Leon can't wait for it all to fall into place.
“It's just a super-exciting time for me right now, with everything going on,” Leon said. “I don't think I've ever been so excited as I am about the chance to come here and really start over and try to become a better player and person in a new place -- and I love the warm weather.”
In two seasons at Notre Dame, Leon started 22 games, scored 10 goals and tallied 27 points.
When she went looking for that new start, Leon considered the University of Wisconsin -- and a chance to play both soccer and hockey -- but eventually called Burleigh, who recruited Leon, the prospect, out of her Toronto area high school.
“When she contacted us and said she was interested, we were certainly interested, too,” Burleigh said.
Leon may be small in stature, but she brings power for her size and bundles it with energy and toughness.
“A lot of that comes from when I played hockey growing up,” she said. “I had two big brothers that pushed me around quite a bit.”
Burleigh is anxious to see her newest addition push the ball around.
“She's a relentless player,” said Burleigh, whose team went 17-8 last season and lost in the second round of NCAA play. “As a striker, she likes to take people on, likes to shoot, and we never feel like we can have enough firepower.”
And it's never too late -- even this late -- to add some.
