Xiovana Ordaz: Eat, Sleep, Play Soccer
For Xiovana Ordaz, her entire life thus far has revolved around a black and white, synthetic leather ball. “I just know that my whole life was soccer,” Ordaz said, with the smile of a person content in her athletic passion. “It was just school, soccer, homework, sleep.”
The Santa Monica College Corsair sophomore forward and woman’s soccer team captain is poised to lead her team into the state playoffs.
Ordaz women’s soccer forward/midfielder has all of the signs of an athlete who has spent most of her life on the soccer field.
Her superior ball control and speed has helped her set up goals for teammates and can put the ball in the back of the net as well. She current leads her team team in assists with 11 and in goals with 11.
Ordaz’s story begins far away from the foaming shores of Santa Monica in the small, northern California farm town of Lodi, about 90 miles east of San Francisco.
Ordaz, an only child, joined her first soccer team at 5 years old. “My Mom just said that I liked the sport so she put me on the soccer team, and I fell in love right there and then,” Ordaz said.
Her earliest memories of the game is the experience of playing goalie which was when she realized that she would rather be scoring goals than blocking them. “Playing goalie was the worst thing because I wanted the ball and I would never get the ball and I knew then that I wanted to be the one making the goals not being in the goal,” Ordaz said.
When she was 16, Ordaz traveled with her team, the Stockton Cougars, and made the single game winning goal that advanced her team to the Birth National Champion Tournament where the Cougars would place third.
In her career as a player for Lodi High School, Ordaz accumulated 18 goals in 65 games over the course of her four years on the varsity squad.
Though Ordaz grew up in the dry and dusty plains of a Lodi small town, she longed to change her scenery to an ocean view.
“I’ve always wanted to be around the beach,” Ordaz said. “I didn’t know SMC was around at all until my cousin, who I live with now, told me. So I came out in the spring while still in [High] School, tried out with the team for a day and loved it.”
Ordaz made the team and just two weeks after graduating from Lodi High School, she moved to southern California to live with her great aunt and play for the Corsairs.
Amongst the trophies strewn around the various offices that straddle Corsair Pavilion and Corsair Field, a Western State Conference women’s soccer title is missing from the collection.
This version of the Corsairs womens’ soccer team has a realistic shot of filling that hole. Finishing with a 14-1-3 overall record, second in the WSC and 7th in the California Community College Athletic Association Women’s Soccer State poll.
The team takes every game very seriously Ordaz is all smiles confident in her team’s abilities.
Besides her pure love for the game, Ordaz's ability to make friends quickly is what the sophomore says has kept her playing for so many years. Of her current team, she said,“I love my team, I need to have good chemistry with the girls if I am going to play hard. We play for each other and I think that’s what makes us a good team."
No matter the result of the games or the teams she tries out for, she will do the one thing she has done her entire life.
Play soccer.