Loyola Maryland women’s soccer completes 2019 recruiting class
BALTIMORE – Three incoming freshmen, including two from Iceland, will join the Loyola University Maryland women’s soccer program this fall to complete the Greyhounds’ Class of 2023.
Lea Kristjánsdóttir and Arín Sigfúsdóttir will come to the Evergreen campus from Iceland, while another, Paige Sim, joins the program from the Valley of the Sun in Phoenix, Arizona.
Kristjánsdóttir has played for the Icelandic club Valur since 207 and also saw time with the Swedish side, GIF Grebbestad earlier in her career. With Valur, she was a three-time Icelandic champion while winning the Rey Cup in 2013, 2015 and 2017. Most recently, she helped Valur’s first team win the Reykjavík title in 2018 and 2019, and she was named the club’s most-promising player in 2017 and 2018.
She also is an accomplished long-distance runner at the 5-, 7- and 10-kilometer distances and won the Icelandair Run in 2014.
Sim comes to Loyola after graduating from Desert Vista High School in Ahwatukee, Arizona where she helped the Thunder win the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s Division I State Championship in 2016 and finish as runners-up in 2017. She was a four-time recipient of the Academic Excellence & Scholar-Athlete Award, and she graduated in the top-seven percent of her high school class with a 4.5 grade-point average. Sim was also a peer tutor in chemistry and physics at Desert Vista, was a member of the National Honor Society, the Science National Honor Society, Rho Kappa Club and Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
She played club for Phoenix Rising FC of the ECNL, leading the team to a second-place finish in the ECNL Southwest Conference in 2018 and a spot in the National ECNL Champions League tournament. The goalkeeper had clean sheets in 10 of her 16 games.
Sigfúsdóttir played for ÍA in her native Iceland where she saw action in 22 contests for the club’s first team. She helped ÍA’s U-20 team take second in the Islandmót competition, and she earned ÍA’s top player award at several age group levels.
In addition to her play with ÍA, she has trained with the Icelandic National age-group teams since 2012, and she was very active in her school, Fjölbrautaskóli Vesturlands (FVA). She was vice president of its student association and president of the charity committee.
Kristjánsdóttir, Sim and Sigfúsdóttir join three players who signed National Letters of Intent with the Loyola program last fall: MK Barnes (Mount Airy, Md.), Alexandra Searing (Allentown, N.J.) and Ada Tempert (Baltimore).
Tempert recently added to her considerable cache of awards when she was named the Gatorade Player of the Year for the State of Maryland in addition to being named an All-American.
