Nyah Biegler hams it up at the Mahomet-Seymour High School soccer field at Middletown Prairie Elementary School in Mahomet this week. The recent M-S graduate, who earned The News-Gazette’s Player of the Year honors this season, isn’t done playing soccer, either. She’ll continue in college at Eastern Illinois starting this fall.
MAHOMET — Nyah Biegler debated about playing soccer for Mahomet-Seymour High School.
Debated about continuing to play the sport at all.
Both scenarios are difficult to imagine nowadays for the recent M-S graduate.
The former is difficult to imagine because Biegler is the 2021 News-Gazette girls’ soccer Player of the Year.
She did “so much 50 to 80 yards from the goal to allow us to succeed,” according to M-S coach Jeremy Davis, and still managed to produce 19 goals and 19 assists from the center-midfielder position while also taking on increased defensive responsibilities to help the Bulldogs’ relatively young back-end group.
Those efforts aided M-S to a 15-3 record and a fifth Class 2A regional championship in as many seasons during a condensed schedule.
Biegler was born into a soccer family.
She was destined to play the sport for an extended period of time.
“It was my first birthday, and I was taking my first steps and my dad had a little soccer ball that he bought me,” Biegler said. “Our family’s just all soccer.”
But Biegler became so immersed in soccer that it eventually wore her down.
Entering high school, she was traveling three hours to St. Louis on a regular basis to work with an Elite Clubs National League team after previously making frequent trips to Indianapolis for the same reason.
“I had a time when I was going to St. Louis that I just wanted to quit,” Biegler said. “I didn’t want to play college soccer. I didn’t want to do anything. I was just burnt out.”
That’s where M-S soccer came in and kept Biegler playing the sport that runs in her blood.
It turned out to be a great arrangement for both parties.
“Coming here and renewing everything — new coaches, new everything — it was just awesome,” Biegler said. “The love for the sport grew again.”
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Many of Biegler’s early soccer memories involve those with her dad Neil Biegler, who is an assistant coach under Davis with the Bulldogs.
Neil Biegler played high school soccer at Limestone High School in Bartonville. He donned the No. 3 jersey at that time, as his daughter eventually would.
“We always would watch soccer games. Our favorite team was Manchester United, and we’d have matching jerseys all the time,” Nyah Biegler said. “On our drives to St. Louis and Indiana for soccer, we’d listen to a soccer podcast.”
Biegler’s competitive soccer career started in the Illinois Futbol Club, with she and M-S senior-to-be Cayla Koerner playing on a boys’ team. Biegler then transitioned to playing for Mahomet’s recreational league and being coached by her dad.
Maddi Claybrooke, a senior defender this spring for the Bulldogs, played alongside Biegler at this time.
“We had a really close friend group we grew up playing soccer with. … We all just became really tight friends,” Claybrooke said. “I remember a lot of the time we would do the homecoming parades together. Our team would always come together in the fall and create a soccer float … and throw candy to everyone else.”
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Those localized friendships soon became more difficult for Biegler to maintain.
Her next soccer stop was in Bloomington, where she again was coached by her father. Biegler then tried out for and found a spot on the ECNL’s Indiana Fire program when she was in seventh grade.
“(My parents) knew it offered opportunities to play in college, and other places around here didn’t,” Biegler said. “It was a great team. … I loved the girls over there. But just driving that far and not having social connections in the community around here (was difficult).”
During two years with the Fire, Biegler remembers that she’d “have to leave early from school three or four times a week.”
Weekends brought about big matches as far away as Washington, D.C., or North Carolina.
“I thought it was normal,” Biegler said. “It was very intense. It’s like going over to Europe and playing with them. … It was a lot of time in and out of the sport to manage our bodies, and we were 12, 13 years old.”
Biegler said a strict diet was imposed upon Fire athletes, though she added Neil and mother Heather were more lenient than some other parents.
In fact, Biegler had to be convinced to eat a food most kids regularly crave.
“I hated chocolate,” Biegler said. “They made us have chocolate milk, and now I love chocolate milk. I drink it after all my games.”
Biegler, however, was reaching a crossroads during her soccer career as she progressed toward high school.
The Fire’s season ran simultaneously with that of Mahomet-Seymour’s. Biegler ultimately decided she wanted to suit up for the Bulldogs, and she also joined the St. Louis-based ECNL squad that played on a different schedule.
This lasted just one year before Biegler knew she needed a change.
“ECNL soccer was great soccer-wise for me. … I got a lot of exposure,” Biegler said. “But the social aspect of it for me, I wasn’t able to be part of this community. And high school soccer brought me my closest friends — definitely the ones I’ll carry on to college.”
Biegler’s parents were supportive and understanding of their daughter’s position.
She’d continue on with the Bulldogs while also returning to Bloomington for club play.
“I definitely made the right decision playing high school soccer,” Biegler said. “(ECNL) has its benefits, too. I probably would’ve been a better soccer player. But this is just about me in a different aspect of my life because soccer’s not everything.”
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Now that Biegler was re-engaging with the M-S soccer scene, she wanted to ensure she gained as much from it as possible.
So she began working out with the Bulldogs’ boys team, also coached by Davis.
Biegler can list off plenty of girls she became close with through Mahomet-area soccer: Claybrooke, Koerner, 2018 graduate Erin Lenschow and former N-G Players of the Year Meredith Johnson-Monfort and Maddy Wade.
But Biegler also feels “I was probably closer with most of the guys” because of their more rigorous training methods.
“They’re more competitive, and that’s what I need,” Biegler said. “They really are chill and the best friends to hang out with, too. We’d just go out every day playing, and they’re super fast, super strong. They’re just built differently — they’re guys — but it’s definitely made me a better player.”
Nate Lundstrom, another member of the Bulldogs’ Class of 2021, is among the boys Biegler bonded with on the pitch.
Lundstrom was friends with Biegler well before high school, too.
“Her dad was a member at Grace Church, so sometimes he’d unlock the gym and we’d be able to play pickup soccer in there,” Lundstrom said. “She was definitely good enough to play with all of us, and it was really fun.”
Biegler and Lundstrom often paired with fellow 2021 M-S graduates Eli Warren and Logan Woodward in local 4-on-4 tournaments. These events would feature first-to-five goals matches with the winner remaining on the field until suffering a loss.
In one particular tournament, the Biegler-Lundstrom team “became the villains that day because we were the youngest people there but we kept winning.”
“Eli had just absolutely destroyed the seniors team one time, and then that game, I think Nyah hit two shots from half (pitch), too, and two shots in a row that sent the team off,” Lundstrom said. “I think someone even said something along the lines of, ‘Don’t worry if she shoots. Guard Eli.’ And then she made them both. That was fun.”
Biegler also feels she was able to discover her voice more by playing with boys, both in Mahomet and during club team practices in Bloomington.
“It just developed my skills so much faster,” Biegler said. “They definitely bring a bunch of different aspects into my life, socially and soccer-wise.”
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Biegler’s soccer development in high school included two important alterations.
First, she switched from primarily playing the outside back defender position to the center-mid role she currently occupies.
Biegler was growing into her 6-foot frame and hitting the weight room with increasing frequency, allowing her to become an effective option at center-mid.
“I’m just a vocal person in general, and being able to be in the center of the field and start leading (was great),” Biegler said. “My soccer IQ is higher in the center of the field.”
The vocal element is the second area in which Biegler experienced change during high school soccer.
Biegler said she wasn’t very talkative as a varsity-playing freshman but was welcomed with open arms by the likes of current Illini Johnson-Monfort and Wade.
Even when she began speaking more, though, Biegler still needed to refine her on-field chatter.
“I was very bossy,” Biegler said. “That’s how I played ECNL, and that was just me as a player.”
Biegler was a captain for the Bulldogs’ 2020 team that never got to compete because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and she retained captaincy this spring.
With numerous younger players, including freshman sister Nadia Biegler, now looking for her leadership, Nyah Biegler took a different approach.
“We had a lot of sophomores that hadn’t played a varsity game, and being able to help them figure out what to do, what decisions are best to be made (was important),” Biegler said. “Being able to cheer them on and being able to just be positive to them whenever they need something, I think that’s how (my leadership) developed.”
This chance to grow as a person and player might not have happened if Biegler decided she was done with soccer just a few years prior.
“She’s had a really big impact on our team. Vocally, you can always count on her,” Claybrooke said. “She’s able to encourage people and warn them of the opponents. … Nyah was a big factor in putting the team in position to score. Taking her out of the middle would’ve hurt us.”
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Biegler’s next soccer stop will have her transitioning back to being a younger athlete in a sea of older athletes.
She’ll soon attend Eastern Illinois and play soccer for coach Jake Plant’s Panthers.
“Because of COVID, all of their seniors are coming back, so it’s going to be a team of 30,” Biegler said. “I’m going to have to fight like crazy to get a spot in there. Honestly, I’ll do whatever the team needs.”
Biegler, who plans to major in biology with the hope of later attending medical school, now struggles to envision a life without soccer.
As Biegler said, there’s more to her than the sport. But the role it’s played in her life is unmistakable.
“Balancing everything is part of life, and it’s going to be hard (in college), but it’s going to be worth it,” Biegler said. “I had to play soccer more, and I’m so excited that I stayed with it.”
