North Alabama seems to have found itself a star in Chloe Richards.
Richards, a junior forward, is a transplant from Cornwell, England. Before she arrived here in the states, Richards help win championships with Truro College in 2010 and 2011.
She also won a league championship cup with the Lewquay LFC league. Now, Richards is trying to help North Alabama capture a Gulf South Conference title and a possible national title too.
Richards has led the Lions to 6-1 overall record with a 3-1 record so far in the GSC. UNA can attribute a lot of their success to Richards who seems to be a scoring machine.
In a recent match against GSC rival Spring Hill College, Richards scored all four of the Lions goals in their 4-0 victory. Richards almost broke a school record. With her four goals, she moved her season total to 13 goals in seven games.
Before her match against Spring Hill, Richards was fourth in the country in scoring. In all likelihood when the NCAA updates their scoring leaders, she’ll either be tied for first or all alone in first place in scoring.
Before the season started UNA head coach Chris Walker was very optimistic about this season despite a few changes as he discussed with the Times Daily newspaper
“It’s virtually a new team from last year,” second-year coach Chris Walker said. “We have 14 returning players, so that’s encouraging. We had a good preseason and a lot of new faces. It’s an athletic team that’s going to be good.”
So far Walker has been right. Last year, his team finished with an 8-8-2 record, so far this season they seem to have gotten off to a better start with the help of Richards leadership.
Richards says the difference between this year’s team and last year’s is that there is better competition amongst her and her teammates which makes it a better team.
“We want to play for each other,” Richards said. “Everybody has been trying really hard to compete. There’s a lot more competition this year on the bench. There’s more players and everyone wants to be on the field.”
That along with Richard’s scoring may be the key to the Lions continuing their winning ways
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