A majority of high school seniors are still trying to figure out where they want to go to school and if they will get in, but senior Julia Ashley has known where she was going to school since her sophomore year.

Julia will be attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall of 2015. She is going as a student-athlete, having been offered a scholarship her sophomore year.

Julia began playing soccer “like everyone else,” when she played Kinderkickers with the Verona Recreation Department.  But unlike most kids she also started to play club soccer at 7 years old.  It was her club team, originally based out of Montclair, that enabled her to be scouted by National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I schools.

“(He) taught me everything,” Julia said about her coach, Jordan Raper, with whom she has worked for 10 years. She is c urrently part of Match Fit Academy.

Through her club team, she has played in tournaments and attended soccer camps at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Virginia, and Boston College. This gave her the opportunity to speak with coaches, though NCAA Division I recruiting rules prohibit coaches from having contact with the player personally until junior year.

All the schools had to contact Julia via Mr. Raper, who would relay the messages to her. By her sophomore year she had scholarship offers from UNC, Boston College, Duke, UVA, and Penn State.

She chose UNC in part because the Atlantic Coastal Conference (ACC) is one of the most competitive NCAA Division I conferences in women’s soccer.

In the winter of her sophomore year, Julia verbally committed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; she will formally sign a commitment letter in the winter of this school year. She wanted to go to college and in the south and liked that the school had a “winning tradition.” The University of North Carolina, under head coach Anson Dorrance, has over 20 national championships, 20 ACC Regular season titles, 20 ACC Tournament championships and  an all-time record of 763-54-29 with a winning percentage of .919.

She also likes North Carolina because it has a good reputation for putting women on the United States National Team; the school currently has nine alumnae on the team.

Julia’s dream did suffer a temporary setback when, on November 21 of last year, she tore her ACL.  She said she realized that, “something you love can be taken away in an instant.” Though she is still recovering and has not been cleared to play, she has not changed any of her goals.

Julia has her sights set on a Division I Championship, an ACC Championship, and beating Duke, UNC’s biggest rival. She has the ultimate goal of winning the Women’s World Cup and Olympic Gold with the national team.

But her first goal is a bit less lofty – graduating from VHS.