Coro: Schimmer taps into passion to be elite

All it took was a ball, a couple rocks spaced on a Mainz, Germany, asphalt street and some sunlight for Marleen Schimmer to fall in love with soccer as a kindergartner.

Growing up near Frankfurt, Schimmer's childhood joy was connected to soccer like her hip was seemingly affixed to her older brother, Tim. She played soccer whenever she could with Tim and his friends, firing shots between rocks for goalposts until the sundown was their game's final horn.

Schimmer played soccer into stardom and expectations but only reconnected with that delight with the game at Grand Canyon. Her vigor translated into one of the nation's best individual offensive seasons, which has facillitated one of the nation's best program turnarounds.

Marleen Schimmer

Schimmer is the newly crowned WAC Offensive Player of the Year, ranks third nationally for points and joins BYU's Mikayla Colohan as the only Division I players with at least 12 goals and 12 assists this season.

"It's all about having fun," Schimmer said after leading the Lopes to their first WAC title as West Division champions. "It's like playing when I was 5 or 6 on the streets without any expectations from outside. I love my teammates. We're such good friends and you can really see that chemistry on the field."

Until this 14-3-2 season, the GCU women's soccer program had not posted a winning season since moving to Division I in 2013. The turnaround began with the hiring of head coach Chris Cissell, who has won WAC Coach of the Year in each of his two GCU seasons and engineered a turnaround from last season's 2-8 start to a 20-4-3 record since then.

The Lopes rank among the top 15% of the nation's programs in NCAA Rating Percentage Index, in large part because Cissell added Schimmer's sensational skills when he came aboard in December 2019. With a title on the line Saturday at GCU Stadium, Schimmer delivered two goals and two assists to give the Lopes a WAC Tournament first-round bye into Friday's semifinals.

"I've grown so much over the last two years," said Schimmer, a former Arizona State player. "Coach Cissell gives me freedom. He said, 'As long as you have fun and enjoy what you're doing, you'll be great.' That's exactly when he said to me when I came here. He said, 'I'm not asking a lot. I'm just asking for you to have fun on the field and do what you love and then everything will come.'

"He just took so much stress and expectations off me because I was always so focused on statistics and playing for the crowd. But he told me to be myself and that everyone loves me and that's exactly what I needed, that freedom. I've grown so much over the last two years."

Marleen Schimmer

But Schimmer does not become a player with 12 goals and 14 assists in 19 games if she did not grow so quickly as a player in her youth.

Tim, a 24-year-old police officer and soccer coach in Germany, is three years older than Marleen, but that did not stop her from playing against him and his friends. It also did not keep them from being so close that he attends practices when he visits Phoenix and wakes at 4 a.m. in Germany to watch her games on ESPN+.

Schimmer copied what her brother did and wound up playing on boys' and girls' soccer clubs for 11 years, sometimes doing so for each team's game on the same day. The level of physicality and speed in boys' play pushed her skills to a dominant level on the girls' side.

"It helped me to grow up really fast, just keeping up with the boys mentally and physically," said Schimmer, a psychology major. "Some would say, 'Oh, there's a girl,' or 'She shouldn't play soccer' or 'She should play with the girls team.' I'd always hear those comments. I had to grow up so fast."

Schimmer took the leap to leave Germany at age 17 for ASU, where she became a freshman starter. She scored at least four goals in each of her first three college seasons, but she nearly has scored as many points this season (38) as her first three seasons combined (39).

"Her technical ability is just incredible," Cissell said. "She has such great technique, can strike the ball unbelievably well, knows how to put the right weight on the pass. A lot of people talk about what a great shooter or finisher she is, but I think she's an even better passer and distributor. She's very unselfish. She's just as happy to get the assist as scoring the goal, but she knows a big part of her role on this team is to be the goal scorer."

Schimmer embraces varying roles from forward to center attacking midfielder and relishes setting up teammates as much as blasting laser shots from 30 yards away. Her soccer savvy allows her to see the bigger team picture and cope with the physical tactics that opponents use to disrupt her.

It is too late to get under her skin on the field. "Schimmy" is too happy for that, as she and her Lopes sit two wins away from a NCAA Division I tournament berth.

Cissell focused on tapping into her passion for the game, knowing that playing with passion would lead to the goals and assists.

"When I struggle outside of soccer, Cissell is always there for me," Schimmer said. "He understands my situation as an international without family here, so he's like a second dad. He understands things on and off the field, which makes him the best coach I've ever had.

"The first thing I noticed here was the family atmosphere. Everyone is so happy for everyone else if you have success. You come to play soccer, but it's more like family, hanging out together every single day and doing what we love. This is definitely the right place for me to be."

Grand Canyon University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Marleen Schimmer

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