Three years together, and Roisin Allaeddini, Mackenzie Hansen and Olivia LaCasto still surprise each other.
Midfielders, team captains and returning all-league bellwethers, the girls are Rosary Academy’s latest soccer starlets. Heirs to former letter winners Kaleigh Moses, Chelsey Patterson and Tayler Dragoo, Allaeddini, Hansen and LaCasto will too continue their careers at college’s highest level.
Longtime Royals coach Sean Melendez believes this year’s team, with those three girls, can become the program’s best. Rare, he said, is a school as small as Rosary lucky enough to tout one footballer committed to an NCAA Division I program.
Rarer still is the small school blessed with three.
“The program’s important to these girls, and it’s not all soccer,” Melendez said. “They’re the veterans this year, leading the underclassmen. But they were once the younger kids learning from the veterans. They know what brings teams together. Yes, when the whistle blows, we want to win. But the bonds they’ve built here, the memories they have, that’s what they care about most.
“It’s a sisterhood.”
Different paths led them to Rosary, but Allaeddini, Hansen and LaCasto love soccer all the same.
Allaeddini said she began playing as a 4-year-old, and only because she sought an activity with more movement than dance.
Boundlessly talented a beginner as she was, Allaeddini wasted little time ascending the ranks. She often played on club teams with girls two, sometimes three, years her senior. But she belonged no matter her age. Small in stature, but quick-footed and masterful with the ball, Allaeddini ruled the midfield as a preteen.
At 14, she attended a U.S. Women’s National Team training camp.
“My nerves got the best of me,” Allaeddini remembers of playing alongside professionals, “but it’s an experience I’ll never forget.”
Hansen, meanwhile, grew up athletically fluent, a Jill-of-all-trades.
Look at her today, and see a basketball center or a volleyball middle blocker, but as a 10-year-old with crisp footwork and a thirst for activity, soccer became her calling. Hansen too played on various local club teams as an up-and-comer, and as luck would have it, she kept growing.
One week before her freshman year at Mater Dei High, Hansen said she chose to go to Rosary.
“I’m proud to represent Rosary,” she said. “We’re not the biggest school, but we’re making a name for ourselves.”
Neither of LaCasto’s parents played soccer, but her older brother did.
Built much like Allaeddini, with a similar motor and comparable skill, LaCasto apprenticed four years on local AYSO teams before leaping into club play. She too chose to attend Rosary over Mater Dei, and joined then-sophomores Allaeddini and Hansen on the pitch for the 2013-14 season.
“I remember being intimidated at first by them,” said LaCasto, now a junior. “I knew Ro’ had played with the national team and was the best player here. I looked up to her and Mackenzie as a freshman, on and off the field, and they took me under their wing.”
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Allaeddini and Hansen got to Rosary in 2012, three years into Melendez’s program rebuild.
Seven years ago, when Melendez – a Servite High alum who once played soccer professionally – inherited the soccer program, Rosary wasn’t much of an Orange County player. Fifteen years had passed since its last playoff appearance, and just two years prior, OCVarsity records show the Royals finished the season with a 2-13-2 record and only nine goals scored.
But that 2009 team, Melendez’s first as a head girls coach, had talent.
With Moses, Dragoo and Patterson on the pitch, Rosary qualified for the playoffs and advanced to the second round. Moses graduated first, in 2010, and played soccer at the United States Air Force Academy; Dragoo graduated the following year and played at UCLA before transferring to UC Riverside; and Patterson graduated in 2012, completing her four-year career at Cal State Fullerton last fall.
Allaeddini and Hansen – and LaCasto a year later – couldn’t have arrived at a better time.
“Pride comes with making this team,” Melendez said. “We don’t have the most talented kids, but our work rate is high. At Rosary, I’d say we’re the program most kids want to be a part of, because all the girls on the team are so close.”
Rosary last year won 11 games and upset higher-seeded Tesoro High in the first round of the CIF-SS Division 1 playoffs. Let Melendez tell it, and they should have beaten eventual-semifinalist Long Beach Poly High.
LaCasto received first-team All-CIF and third-team All-Orange County laurels at season’s end. Allaeddini and Hansen also earned postseason honors.
Melendez graduated a large senior class in the spring, but returned his indispensable midfield. Before the season, he called that unit Orange County’s best, and in December, OCVarsity ranked Rosary ninth in its preseason rankings.
“These girls have such high standards,” Melendez said.
Allaeddini, Hansen and LaCasto know what makes a great midfielder.
“Tenacity,” LaCasto said.
“You have to multitask,” Hansen added.
“Covering ground constantly,” Allaeddini concluded.
Each girl, Melendez said, does those things and more.
LaCasto is committed to Loyola Marymount University, Hansen to the University of San Diego and Allaeddini to UC Davis. Rosary has others garnering interest from college recruiters, but if this winter Rosary earns a sixth playoff berth under Melendez, it’ll largely be the work of its golden midfield.
“We’re giving, and leaving, everything on the field,” Allaeddini said.
Contact the writer: 714-704-3790 or bwhitehead@ocregister.com
