Julie Cane not only plays for the Hopewell Valley Central High School girls’ soccer team, she works for the HVCHS boys’ soccer coach.
Cane is a proud employee of Ed Gola at Uncle Ed’s Creamery in Pennington.
For Cane, life gets no better.
“When he comes in we get to talk soccer and talk ice cream; it’s a great time, I love it,” she said. “That’s, like, my two favorite things. You got a happy Julie right there. Like, I’m just good.”
Her craving of ice cream is one that nearly the entire planet shares, but her love of soccer is what makes her a cut above a lot of players out there.
“You know how everyone says, ‘Oh it’s as social escape and it’s a distraction?’ Well for me, it honestly and truly is,” Cane said. “I can get out of class, I can go and just play and have fun and I can be competitive in a positive manner where it’s helping me socially and helping mentally to the point where I feel good about myself.”
And the way she looks at it, Cane needs one passion to offset the other, as the ice cream she digests doesn’t have time to affect her weight.
“I’m having fun in soccer and hey, I’m working out…working out is never bad for me,” she said. “You get to stay in shape. So I’m not complaining. I’m definitely breaking even. I would truly say, I’m extremely blessed to have such an outlet like [soccer] and to be so passionate about something.”
HoVal coach John McGinley feels pretty blessed to have Cane back for another season. For the past three years Katarina Nilsson was the Bulldog everybody knew about, graduating as the program’s all-time leading scorer with 88 goals. But Cane quietly made her contributions, collecting 14 goals and 13 assists as a sophomore and 14 goals and 13 assists last year. That would have put her in the limelight had her teammate not been breaking records.
Cane had three goals and an assist in Hopewell’s 2-3 start this season, and McGinley feels that is only part of the senior’s value.
“Her numbers are good, obviously,” the coach said. “But she’s the kind of kid that gets lost a little bit because of other things she does. Last year against PDS (a 2-1 win in the Mercer County Tournament finals), the game started to turn a little bit. We scored, but they’re starting to come at us. We’re begging kids to adjust what they’re doing—because they’re just throwing everything at us—and Julie just does it on her own. That’s the kind of kid she. She probably had no stats that would jump out in that game, but while other kids are still trying to score and we’re trying to hold down the fort because they’re pounding us a little bit, she’s coming back on defense.”
That’s part of the gratification Cane gets from wearing a team’s jersey and representing it to the best of her abilities. It was an attitude she developed upon getting into travel soccer.
“Literally that pride, I remember being like ‘Yeah I play for Hopewell, who do you play for?’” she said. “That is something I really value, even when I was little. That was my biggest thing. I wanted to represent something that I was proud of and I knew I could do that through soccer.”
Her mom, the former Sandra Bennett, had that same pride as a standout for the Bulldogs field hockey team. Cane was impressed by her mom’s history and tried a field hockey clinic in first grade, but it wasn’t for her.
“I think my parents just decided I had too much energy and I needed to burn it on soccer where I could run and never stop,” Cane said. “There’s a lot of whistles in field hockey.”
She ran right onto the varsity as a freshman, playing outside back her first year before getting moved to center-midfield. With Nilsson doing so much scoring Cane was content in a playmaker role. This year she is being asked to become more of a goal scorer.
“She has to look for her shot more,” McGinley said. “She’s just unselfish. She will set people up, which is great. But I’m like ‘Julie, you just need to go to goal.’ She’s been doing a better job of that this year. If she’s around the goal, I want her to take the shot or go to goal as opposed to maybe looking to pass, at least until we get more kids involved and comfortable.”
Cane is ready to embrace the responsibility.
“If you’re not excited for something like this, I don’t know what you’re doing out there,” she said. “That’s a role any offensive player would love to take on for their team. I’m very much of an attacking midfielder mindset of setting up plays. That is how I like to play, but I understand the position. My goal this year is to go to the goal and shoot.”
Cane matches skill with brains on the pitch—even before games when she can be seen with her nose buried in a book.
“I am a reader, and I know my reading is a surprise to my coaches and teammates,” she said with a laugh. “I find it helps me relax like music does for so many others. It started during the summer before eighth grade when I broke my arm and wasn’t able to play for four weeks.”
She carries that intelligence into everyday life. Cane is Hopewell’s student council president, and is already committed to play for the University of New Hampshire, although her major is undecided.
As someone who lives on the tow path along the Delaware Canal, Cane has long been an outdoors girl who loves to run, bike, ski and go on the river. Thus, her new school in the wilds of New England fits right in with all that she stands for.
“I liked New Hampshire from the get-go,” she said. “Seeing the campus, meeting the girls and seeing that pride they have of playing for your school was really big. And I love the area. What beats New Hampshire? It’s gorgeous.”
And if there is a good ice cream place nearby, it will be perfect.
Hopewell Valley’s Julie Cane in action against Trenton Sept. 7, 2017. HoVal won the home game 4-0. (Photo by Mike Schwartz/mssphoto.com.),
