{"id":1477,"date":"2017-11-08T10:16:33","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T15:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=1477"},"modified":"2023-08-04T09:30:16","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T13:30:16","slug":"just-for-kicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/just-for-kicks\/","title":{"rendered":"Just for Kicks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By the third one, surely, Gabby Cuevas was ready to give up. This was three years ago, when Cuevas went down with her third ACL tear in four years. She was in her fourth season at UConn, seemingly at the end of a collegiate soccer career that had been repeatedly and cruelly interrupted by injury. At that point, it could hardly have seemed worth the trouble to try to come back again.<\/p>\n<aside>\n<header>Don\u2019t let that smile fool you<\/header>\n<p>Sunny disposition aside, Cuevas is a tenacious defender. With her in the lineup, the Hawks have posted shutouts in 16 of 31 games to date.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>You\u2019d think so, anyway. In fact, Cuevas insists, giving up \u201cnever crossed my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI couldn\u2019t picture college without soccer, and not being part of a team,\u201d she says. \u201cAs soon as it happened, I was like, I know what I need to do. When can I get surgery?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That insistence powered Cuevas through another grueling round of rehab, and ultimately brought her to Monmouth. Granted two additional seasons of eligibility by the NCAA\u2014her first two ACL tears occurred in the very first games of her 2011 and 2012 seasons, and her third happened in the fourth game of the 2014 season\u2014Cuevas left UConn with a psychology degree and a hunger to get back on the field. From there, the Wayne, New Jersey, native (a three-time All-State pick during her time at powerhouse Immaculate Heart Academy) made the comfortable transition to Monmouth, where she immediately earned a starting spot with the Hawks.<\/p>\n<p>Starting every game for Monmouth last fall, Cuevas paced a defense that posted 11 shutouts. She finished the season as a second-team All-MAAC pick, a vital piece in a squad that finished 14-5-1 en route to the regular-season and conference tournament titles. Coming into the 2017 season, longtime coach Krissy Turner called her \u201ca seasoned veteran\u201d who \u201cleads by example in all that she does.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now 24 and suiting up in her seventh collegiate season, Cuevas knows that \u201cseasoned\u201d is putting it politely. \u201cI\u2019m not even the \u2018team mom\u2019\u2014we have a fifth-year player who\u2019s the team mom,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cI\u2019m known as the team grandma.\u201d She\u2019s particularly tight with the sophomores, who arrived on campus at the same time she did, but says she\u2019s proud to play \u201cmiddle man\u201d between the coaching staff and players. \u201cI\u2019ve been around the game longer, so I know why we do things,\u201d she says. \u201cBeing a mentor comes easy for me, but I also joke around with them: \u2018You guys keep me young.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As she works toward her master\u2019s in social work\u2014she\u2019s eyeing a career in family mental health counseling\u2014Cuevas owns a unique perspective that makes her not only a rare teammate, but an inspired choice for the university\u2019s new promotional push. That\u2019s her in the debut video for Monmouth\u2019s #PerfectDay campaign, jogging along the boardwalk, working on a class project in the library, and working out in the weight room and on the practice field. \u201cI really didn\u2019t know what to expect,\u201d she says of filming the clip. \u201cI\u2019m like, I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing. I\u2019m a soccer player.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That she is, remarkably, still.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Injuries and seven (yes, seven) collegiate seasons in soccer have given veteran defender Gabby Cuevas unwavering drive\u2014and a whole lot of perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":1476,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":46,\"y\":12}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[94,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-play"],"thumbnail":"<img width=\"200\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-200x300.jpg\" class=\"lazyload wp-image-1476 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" role=\"presentation\" style=\"object-position:46% 12%\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas.jpg 2800w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-2048x3072.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-1536x2304.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-1400x2100.jpg 1400w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-828x1242.jpg 828w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-360x540.jpg 360w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/11\/cuevas-9x14.jpg 9w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>","catString":"Athletics, Play","issue":"Fall 2017","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1477"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16794,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions\/16794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}