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Soccer club to honor Green's spirit Ex-player died of rare cancer at 19 By RANDY HAMMERICKSEN Two of the foremost junior soccer coaches in the Rogue Valley say Shelley Green played with fearless passion. Her ferocious, competitive spirit never wavered, according to Dick Darcy and Dave Potter. Green, 19, a former North Medford High girls soccer player and a decorated youth player for Rogue Valley Soccer Club teams, died of a rare form of bone marrow cancer on May 9 at Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland. She leaves behind a legacy that may prove inspirational to budding soccer players on many of the same fields on which she excelled for more than a decade. In memory of Green, the Rogue Valley Soccer Club is creating permanent plaques in her name to be presented annually to the top boy and girl players in the Rogue Valley Soccer Club. The awards will go to players who exemplify the competitive spirit and drive that Green exhibited as a junior player for Potter's Crystal Reign team and Darcy's Fighting Irish youth team and at North Medford, which she graduated from last year. "Those are big shoes to fill," says Darcy. "Shelley worked hard and played hard. She was the last line of attack for our Fighting Irish teams, and she made her goalkeepers, like Amber Bates, look good. She didn't let many balls get back there. "To find a young man and young lady who play with that spirit to give the Shelley Green trophy to will be a real honor for these young kids coming up. To be compared with Shelley Green is an honor." Rogue Valley Soccer Club President Tim Driver says the club is donating $200 to the American Cancer Society in Green's name for research. The club has more than 1,600 playing members, according to Driver. "It's neat that these kids growing up playing soccer will know who Shelley Green was, and that she played the game so hard and so well," says Driver. "We want her to be remembered for that. "The main thing we want our kids and their parents to know is that Shelley played and worked hard at soccer, and she had a lot of fun doing it." Potter says Green's nature rubbed off on coaches and teammates alike. "I first got to know Shelley at Kennedy (Elementary School) when I was teaching there and she was a student," says Potter. "I could see she was a special kid and a special soccer player right away." She was a defensive specialist on his Crystal Reign team. But there were times when the offense stalled and Green was moved to forward to jump-start it. "You knew she probably wouldn't score the winning goal," says Potter, "but she would be a part of it because it seemed like she would always have the ball." Leann Green, Shelley's mother, is left with myriad happy memories of her daughter, on soccer fields and elsewhere, to carry her through a difficult time of grieving. She wears her daughter's former North Medford letterman's jacket, as she did Saturday when she attended the North Medford-Crater baseball doubleheader. Green was a three-year letter-winner as a North soccer player. "Soccer was important to Shelley in her young life," says Leann Green. "She was always a fast, aggressive player, and she enjoyed playing that way." Leann Green remembers one of many soccer highlights her daughter enjoyed. Shelley Green was on an Oregon Olympic Development junior team in Vancouver, British Columbia. "The rain was falling at about a 45-degree angle, and it was cold and windy," says Leann Green. "Her coach put her on the other team's best player, and the girl absolutely couldn't get past Shelley. "After the game, the coach of the other team came up to us and told us how much he respected Shelley for the job she did. He said he wished he had Shelley on his team. "I remember Shelley saying, `I'm so tired, my legs feel like Popsicle sticks.' She had played that hard. But she always did." Potter says Green was prone to injury. Some were accidental, some were the result of the intensity with which she played. "I tried to get her to slow down just a little, but she had no slow-down in her," says Potter. "Even when she was involved in a car accident in high school, we could say, `Well, that's Shelley's kind of luck.' "But when she came down with this cancer, you could only shake your head. That's going beyond. That's not fair. You have to ache for her family." Darcy last met with Green just a few weeks ago. "We had lunch the day she went to Portland (to the hospital), and she was real upbeat," says Darcy. "She was talking about her future after this (cancer) was finally done. She said she planned to go back to school (at Oregon State). "When I left her," said Darcy, as his voice quivered, "she said, `I love you.' "It was hard." Today's Sports Index Mail Tribune Copyright� The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, OR U.S.A.