Daily Pilot High School Female Athlete of the Week: Edison’s captain Kirk

Amy Kirk wears No. 1 on her jersey as the starting goalkeeper for the Edison High girls’ soccer team, but last year she was really No. 3.

Kirk now enjoys a starting role as a senior. But last year as a junior, she was third-string, buried on the Chargers’ depth chart behind a pair of seniors in Zoe Clevely and Jessica Neighbors.

It wasn’t an ideal situation in Kirk’s return to high school soccer. She had taken her sophomore year off to focus on her training and athleticism with her Slammers FC club goalkeeper coach, Fabian Cerutti. When you’re 5-foot-5 as a girls’ soccer keeper, that’s a below-average height, but her fitness was something she could control.

“I really loved club at that point, and I wanted to better myself because of my height,” Kirk said. “I was really trying to push to be better.”

Kirk couldn’t get in goal as a junior playing behind the Pepperdine-bound Clevely, a four-year starter and last year’s Sunset League MVP. So she did something that Edison coach Kerry “Mac” Crooks said she had not seen before in her 27 years as head coach with the Chargers.

Kirk asked to play in the field, something she hadn’t done since she was an 8-year-old in AYSO.

“She knew that obviously Zoe was a big-time goalkeeper, so she decided to spend a lot of her time working on her foot skills,” Crooks said. “It was a brave move, and she worked hard to earn playing time. It’s not easy for a player who’s been a goalkeeper her whole life to translate to a field player. I would say it’s a lot easier to go the other way, but she’s super-athletic.”

Kirk found a role as a reserve defensive midfielder for Edison, helping it win the Sunset League title. Now, as a senior, she’s back in a more familiar position, between the pipes as starting goalkeeper. Not only that, but she’s a team captain, along with fellow seniors Maddie Macias, Kayla Herbert and Michael Guptill.

The shoes of Clevely may be tough for Kirk to fill, both literally and figuratively, but she’s holding her own so far. Kirk, the Daily Pilot High School Female Athlete of the Week, posted three straight shutouts to help the Chargers win the President’s Cup division of the Aliso Cup. Edison used a second-half goal from junior Chloe Helenihi to beat Orange Lutheran 1-0 to win the title Monday at Aliso Niguel High.

Previously, Kirk had a pair of shutouts on Dec. 9. She stopped three penalty kicks in a 0-0 (2-1 shootout) win over Studio City Harvard-Westlake. She then made two saves in a 1-0 win over El Dorado in the President’s Cup semifinal, with senior defender Amanda Chadwick scoring the winning goal.

The wins felt nice for Kirk, especially after Edison was dominated by Corona Santiago 4-1 in the tournament opener on Dec. 5. The loss prevented the Chargers from winning their pool.

“I was very upset with my performance, especially being a senior and starting goalkeeper,” Kirk said. “I could have saved those balls, and I’ve saved them before. Going into the Harvard-Westlake game, I had a better warmup and I prepared myself a lot more. I wanted to show ‘Mac’ that I’m not going to let balls in the back of our net that easily.”

Kirk can be forgiven for an early-season bad game. The Chargers (3-1-2) are young after graduating 12 seniors. Clevely and Neighbors were two of them, but Crooks said Edison also lost its entire back line on defense.

New faces are back there, like Chadwick, who recently committed to Pace University in New York. Junior Serena Starks, who is committed to Princeton for softball, is another regular on defense this season, along with senior Megan Blatt and sophomores Abby McCollam and Kelli McKay.

Kirk is one of two goalkeepers, along with junior Jessica Oatis. Kirk may be short, but she said having a year of playing in the field also gives her an advantage.

“I loved playing on the field,” Kirk said. “It really made me understand the game a lot more and appreciate my teammates, because I understand how hard it is. Now I know what to expect and what not to expect. There are certain balls I know they can get to and certain balls I know they can’t, so it kind of helped me gain knowledge and help me communicate with my back line and my midfielders more often now.”

Kirk has shown that she’ll do whatever she can to help the team, so her role as team captain makes sense. She’s also smart in the classroom, where she said she has a 3.8 grade-point average. She wants to be pre-med in college, and UC Irvine is currently her top choice, though she also hopes to play college soccer.

She’s accomplished on the club level, where Kirk helped the Slammers under-14 and under-15 teams win Elite Club National League national titles in 2015 and ‘16, respectively.

She may be undersized height-wise for the next level, but the amount of heart she plays with has never been in question.

“You know, she just wants to play soccer,” Crooks said. “She just loves the game, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

*

Amy Kirk

Born: Nov. 22, 2000

Hometown: Huntington Beach

Height: 5 foot 5

Sport: Soccer

Year: Senior

Coach: Kerry Crooks

Favorite food: Tacos

Favorite movie: “The Goonies”

Favorite athletic moment: Helping the Slammers FC under-14 team win the ECNL national championship in 2015 in Seattle, making a big save late in the championship game against San Diego Surf.

Week in review: Kirk earned three straight shutouts in goal to help Edison win the President’s Cup division of the Aliso Cup. The Chargers beat Harvard-Westlake 0-0 (2-1 in PKs), El Dorado 1-0 and Orange Lutheran 1-0.

matthew.szabo@latimes.com

Twitter: @mjszabo