The U.S. women’s team is largely a veteran group, but one of its brightest stars is teenage sensation Tiffany Roberts.
She missed her senior prom, and she’ll miss her high school graduation ceremony, too.
But that won’t keep Tiffany Roberts from realizing her dream: to play on the U.S. national team in the World Cup and, probably, in the 1996 Olympics.
Roberts, 18, is the youngest player on the U.S. roster that’s going to the World Cup in Sweden, though she doesn’t play that way on the field. She draws rave reviews from her teammates and coaches for her defensive tenacity and overall fighting spirit.
“The only thing I’d like her do is to score a goal or two,” said U.S. coach Tony DiCicco. “The last goal she scored was against Denmark in February. She’s had a couple of assists, but I would like to see her score more.”
Roberts first burst onto the national scene when U.S. coaches saw the speedy 16-year-old at an ODP regional camp in Boca Raton, Fla. She started her first game March 16, 1994, in the Algarve Cup against host Portugal and has started in 26 of the 27 U.S. internationals since her debut.
Born in Petaluma, Calif., to Dave and Rose, who herself was born in the Philippines, Roberts is the latest in a long line of national team talent with ties to the San Francisco Bay Area, including Cal alumnae Joy Fawcett and Mary Harvey, and Stanford alums Julie Foudy and Sarah Rafanelli.
As a youth player, Roberts says she was like a lot of young girls, looking up to the likes of Rafanelli, Michelle Akers and Carin Gabarra.
Playing alongside those and other players who were her childhood idols was a bit nerve-wracking at first, she says, and she didn’t think she’d be back after what she calls a bad first training camp.
“I was very surprised,” she said.
But Roberts hung around. She played in the Algarve Cup and then sparkled in the Chiquita Cup against Germany, China and Norway. She shone even more in the CONCACAF qualifying tournament, scoring three goals as the U.S. romped to the regional title.
Her performances earned her an invitation to join more than 20 other players at the U.S. women’s residential training camp in Sanford, Fla., this winter to prepare for the upcoming World Cup.
Since her first few games with the national team, when she was primarily used as a marking back, DiCicco has utilized Roberts and her considerable speed at outside midfielder; she’s been the regular starter on the right side. Her club and high school teams mostly used her up front, and that versatility could come in handy in Sweden.
“I got to try forward in France, and I thought it was fun,” Roberts said of the last U.S. trip to Europe. “But ever since I came on the national team, as I started going up in levels in soccer, they started putting me at outside half, so I’m starting to get more comfortable at midfielder. I like all the positions, because in France I played marking back and also in each game I played in different positions.”
In the event of injuries or if an opposing team plays with three up front, the U.S. — heavy on midfielders and low on defenders — could put reserve Holly Manthei out on the flanks and drop Roberts back.
“We can use her in a take-this-player-out-of-the-game type thing, where we need to shut someone down,” DiCicco said. “Tiffany is our most relentless defender. She’s the quickest player to go from offense to defense. If you beat her, she recovers faster than anyone else. When she played in the defense against France, she was very solid and was winning all the head balls.”
Off to the races
But winning head balls is not the specialty of the 5-foot-4, 112-pound Roberts. Like DiCicco said, Roberts is fast. She ranks somewhere among the top five in the national team’s periodic speed ladder races, which determine who the fastest player on the team is. Defender Thori Staples may have a slight edge there.
Like Staples, Roberts has a track background, her specialties being the 400 and 800 meters. She actually started track at the tender age of 5, while soccer didn’t come along until she wanted to follow her friends and older brothers into the sport at age 7.
Roberts also competed in gymnastics for six years but pulled out when faced with a choice between being a gymnast and doing everything else she wanted to do.
She says she’d like to do both soccer and track in college — at the University of North Carolina — but probably will have to put the latter off till her sophomore year. She’ll likely be preparing with the U.S. team for the ’96 Olympics during the spring semester instead of going to school.
Actually choosing a college, in the end, wasn’t that difficult. Her final choices were UNC, Stanford and Notre Dame. She had visited nearby Stanford plenty of times and didn’t visit South Bend, Ind. But when she came back from her recruiting trip to Chapel Hill, she said she knew that Carolina was the place to be, and so she decided early — last September — to commit to becoming a Tar Heel.
Roberts should be the latest in a succession of dominant college players for coach Anson Dorrance after her success with the national team, her club, the Tri-Valley Stars, and with Carondelet High School, ranked No. 1 in the country for much of this past year.
For her efforts as a youth player, Roberts was named this year’s Parade Magazine High School Player of the Year and is a three-time high school all-American.
Joining the national team as a teen has meant Roberts has had to give up some other aspects of her high school life, including going to classes — she’s taking correspondence courses to finish up — and going to normal senior class events.
“I’ve missed it a lot,” she says. “When I go home on breaks, I’ll go to my high school for a day and hang out with my friends and my teachers.”
Gabarra is the oldest player on the team at 30, and Akers is close behind at 29, but the age gap isn’t a problem on the field. Do her teammates make her feel her age off the field?
“Yeah, all the time actually,” she laughed.
Midfielder Jen Lalor, Roberts’ roommate in Florida, said the team often kids her roomie, especially after the latter’s birthday on May 5.
Lalor, only 20-years-old herself, said, “We say things like, ‘Now you can buy lottery tickets.'”
by Soccer America Associate Editor Dean Caparaz