Hammoud Takes Soccer--and Winning--Seriously

Sommer Hammoud of Los Alamitos High didn’t get serious about soccer until last summer.

By then, she already had one Southern Section Division I girls’ soccer title under her belt and was beginning to receive attention from college scouts.

This season, Hammoud added another Division I title, was selected the Division I defensive player of the year, and also signed a letter of intent to play for UCLA this fall.

To hear Hammoud tell it, all this happened rather naturally.

She doesn’t dwell on the hours she spent running this summer so she could improve her endurance. And she won’t complain about a preseason injury that left her unable to play for about three weeks and also sapped her of much of the conditioning advantage she had gained over the summer.

“I worked through it,” she said.

Hammoud also doesn’t complain about the days during the Islamic month of Ramadan, when she fasts with her family from dawn until dusk. During the holy period, which fell in January this year, Hammoud rises about 4:30 a.m. to eat and pray with her family. She doesn’t eat again until after dusk--that’s after a full day at school and soccer practice.

The fasting makes it difficult to concentrate in class and she sometimes tires more easily at soccer practice.

But that didn’t stop Hammoud from leading Los Alamitos to its second-consecutive Sunset League title or from maintaining her straight-A average. She plans to go into medicine.

“She’s about 30-years-old maturity-wise,” Los Alamitos Coach Rich Manning said. “She’s not as emotional about things, about the ups and downs; she sees the big picture.”

Hammoud saw the big picture for Los Alamitos this season, playing center midfielder for the Griffins, although she is a natural on the wing.

“She looks at some kind of situation, like a mistake, and she’ll just analyze it, ‘This is what I have to do.’ And she goes about solving things,” Manning said.

As quick as she is on the field and in the classroom, Hammoud has been curiously slow to realize the implications of winning two Southern Section championships.

“Two? That’s good!” she said. “But it hasn’t really sunk in yet, I don’t think.”