All-State MVP. All-Valley Player of the Year. Valley Defensive MVP in 2007.
It all started when Brianne Larsen Bastian received a call for AA soccer tryouts that would take place in just two hours.
Larsen, a senior defender for the UVU women’s soccer team, began playing recreation soccer in the fifth grade and moved onto AA in the sixth grade when her dad called her after driving by a sign for AA soccer just two hours before the tryouts. After that she played club soccer for Celtic Storm in her years at Orem High School. Larsen also played, and lettered in, basketball in high school but stuck with soccer because it was her passion.
That passion faced some difficulties upon her arrival. Coming to UVU, Larsen wanted to be a part of the nursing program but knew the time commitment would compete with soccer. After weighing her options, she chose soccer over nursing.
“Soccer is my passion,” Larsen said. “It’s so much fun. The team is awesome and you get to make a lot of lifetime friends.”
Larsen chose to come to UVU because she liked the idea of being close to home and having the support of her family. It helped that Wolverines head coach Brent Anderson was the assistant coach for her club team, and she liked the ideas he had for the team as well as the way he ran things.
While Larsen is committed to soccer and her schoolwork, she enjoys traveling and spending time with her family in her spare time. She recently married and plans to travel to Indonesia with her husband next summer.
Larsen prepares for her last season at UVU by keeping her spirits high as she talks about the team that just won two games on the road this last weekend.
“That was great for us, two really big wins, and I think we’re just going to keep going up hill,” she said. “I’m really excited for the rest of this season.”
Her favorite memory from playing at UVU when the team traveled to El Paso, TX, and beat the University of Texas El Paso 1-0. According to Larsen, the Wolverines were considered the underdogs, making the unexpected win all the more memorable.
Larsen advises younger girls wanting to play soccer or any other sport to go for it, saying there is a lot of time and commitment involved, but that the effort is worth it.
“It’s an experience that a ton of people don’t get and wish they had,” Larsen said. “I’m really grateful that I took the opportunity.”
Larsen is studying Behavioral Science with an emphasis on social work and plans on graduating spring of 2012. She became interested in social work when she first heard about it, prompting her to take an intro class. She immediately liked the topic and planned on working in the field as a career. She recently interviewed for an internship for the 2012 spring semester to work in a school-based program working with local youth.
“I love soccer and I would love to continue playing it, but it’s going to be over in November because I’ll never play at this high competitive level again,” Larsen said. “That’s sad, but I think it will be good to try some other things in life too.”
