BATON ROUGE — LSU goalkeeper Mo Isom and the Texas Challenge Soccer Club have earned the right to play for a national championship after capturing the USYS Southern Regional Championship on Wednesday at the WRAL Soccer Complex in Raleigh, N.C.
The club is now set to compete at the 2008 U.S. Youth Soccer National Championships to be held July 25-29 at the Burns Park Soccer Complex in Little Rock, Ark.
Isom, a freshman from Marietta, Ga., was brilliant in goal for the Challenge as she recorded four shutouts in five matches, including a 3-0 blanking of the Tophat Gold Soccer Club of Georgia in the championship match on Wednesday morning.
Isom led the TSC Challenge to the regional championship in the Under-19 division with shutouts against FC Tanasi of Tennessee on June 20 (0-0), Hurricane FC of Oklahoma on Sunday (4-0) and the Baton Rouge Soccer Club of Louisiana on Monday (3-0). The only goal allowed by Isom was in a dominating 4-1 victory over the Mandeville Soccer Club of Louisiana on Tuesday.
She hopes to join LSU All-Americans Michelle Makasini and Chelsea Potts as Tigers who have been crowned national champions while competing in the USYS National Championship Series.
“We’re definitely excited about the opportunity to play for a national championship,” Isom said. “We have a great group of girls here with the Challenge, and we feel like we have a chance to go to Little Rock next month and win. It’s been a lot of fun for me to play with so many club players of this caliber, and it will only help me for the start of fall camp later this summer.”
Isom is a welcomed addition to the collegiate ranks as she has already proven herself as one of the elite goalkeepers in this freshman class. She was recently named a Soccer Buzz Top 75 Recruit for the Class of 2008 and among the top six goalkeeper recruits in the country by Soccer Buzz Magazine with the release of its recruiting rankings in May.
Isom is an early enrollee at LSU as she helped lead the Tigers to a 2-1-3 overall record during the spring season that included shutouts of national powers North Carolina and Duke on Feb. 16. She finished the spring with four shutouts and a sparkling 0.375 goals against average.