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Princeton University Athletics
Negron To Participate In Under-21 National Team Camp
April 09, 2004 | Women's Soccer
April 9, 2004
Esmeralda Negron, the 2003 Ivy League women's soccer Player of the Year, has been invited to participate at the U.S. national team's Under-21 camp later this month.
The training camp will feature 25 of the top Under-21 players in the country. The event will be held at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif.
"I think this is a great opportunity for her to see how she fits in with the next level," said Princeton coach Julie Shackford. "I think it's premature to guess the next step mostly because she has never had this chance. I just think it will be a great opportunity for her, and it's also great for our program and the league."
Negron, from Harrington Park, N.J., will be competing for a spot on an 18-member travel team that will emerge from the original pool of 25 players, plus any other players who may be added to the pool during the process. The Under-21 team will compete in various international competitions during the summer, including the Nordic Cup in Iceland in July where it will face off against the best age-group teams of Europe. In addition, more than 25 current members of the U.S. national team's player pool are alumnae of the Under-21 national team.
Negron, who will be a senior at Princeton this fall, tied the Princeton single-season record with 13 goals last year as she earned first-team All-Region and third-team All-America honors. She enters her senior year with 27 career goals, second all-time at Princeton and 14 away from tying Linda DeBoer's 21-year-old school record.
Princeton, which went 11-3-3 a year ago and advanced to its fifth-straight NCAA tournament, returns nine starters for the 2004 season and adds a strong recruiting class, led by Canadian national team member Diana Matheson.
Shackford will enter the 2004 season needing two wins to reach 100 for her Princeton career. Her 98 wins at Princeton (her overall career record is 140-70-13) are more than any other women's soccer coach in school history and more than any men's coach other than Jimmy Reed, who won 136 from 1938-66.