In the Shadows : They’ve Got the Skills, They’ve Got the Stats, but These Players Don’t Get the Attention the Stars Do

They aren’t on the preseason recruiting lists and are rarely the subjects of feature stories or profiles.

Yet, they can be stars on poor teams or secondary players in the shadows of greatness. The general public may not know their names, but their coaches do.

They are underrated players, the ones who are appreciated by their teammates if not by anyone else.

Who are Orange County’s best unknowns, the ones deserving of a few moments in the spotlight?

Caitlin Murphy Esperanza Girls’ Soccer

Size is not supposed to be a factor in soccer.

It’s not like basketball, where 7 feet in height gets you closer to the basket, or like in football, where 300 pounds will anchor your offensive line.

In soccer, any athletic body-type can get the job done. After all, it’s a non-contact sport, right? Go watch any girls’ soccer game and you’ll see that’s a fallacy--big, bruising players bounce each other all over the field.

That’s why coaches sometimes cringe when they see Esperanza’s Caitlin Murphy running at them--all 5-1, 98 pounds of her. Often, their first reaction is that she’ll get crushed.

But after a few minutes, opposing coaches quickly realize Murphy’s size is deceptive.

“I’ve had coaches come to me at the end of the game and say things [like], ‘She’s out there screaming for the ball and she’s intimidating the hell out of my players,’ ” Esperanza Coach Phyllis Scarborough said.

Murphy, a second-team All-Sunset League selection last season, is a big reason Esperanza is 12-4-1 overall and ranked No. 6 in the county.

Her desire was clear from the beginning.

“When she started playing soccer when she was 7, she just took the ball all the way down the field and had this look on her face like, ‘Get out of my way,’ ” said Murphy’s father, Mark.

Sometimes, however, coaches have had trouble seeing the true Murphy because of her height.

“A lot of coaches that I played for before, they would change my position [when marking a player] because they thought I couldn’t handle it because they were big, and I thought, ‘I can handle it,’ ” Murphy said. “That’s really frustrating.”

Murphy said even Scarborough was skeptical about using Murphy to mark bigger players at first.

“But I went out there and tried to play tough. I guess I just had to prove myself,” Murphy said.

These days, Scarborough has no qualms about putting Murphy anywhere on the field--she has played everywhere but in the goal and at sweeper.

Sometimes, as Scarborough is watching the game, an assistant will ask if she wants to change Murphy’s mark because her opposing player is so much taller.

“No,” Scarborough says, “It looks OK to me.”

Murphy, a junior, is beginning to be noticed in the soccer world. She was selected for the Olympic Development Program’s District team and will travel to Bakersfield next month to compete at the state level.

Scarborough worries about what college coaches will see when they come to watch her.

“I think [Murphy] should be a big-game player [in college], and my big fear is that some college coaches will look at her size and go, ‘No way.’ But if they ever see her play, they’ll know she plays like she’s 6-feet tall,” Scarborough said.

Murphy said she will go “anywhere that will take me” to play in college.

“If I am underrated and coaches aren’t noticing me, then the ones that do, I’m happy to go with them,” she said.

And whichever college gets her will have a very big player.