“I think that every athlete at one point or another dreams of playing at the Division 1 level,” Le Moyne College women’s soccer star Jenicah Brown told me in an interview. Brown would ultimately go on to achieve this dream, making Le Moyne history by scoring the first goal and adding a big assist in the women’s soccer team’s first Division I victory, a 3-2 win last fall against Niagara. But at times, it seemed this dream was pretty unlikely.
Fourteen months ago, Cazenovia College made the announcement that it would be permanently shutting its doors at the end of the following semester. This decision would ultimately leave many student athletes with an uncertain future as to where to take their game, or if they would even be able to get playing time elsewhere. Among them was Brown.
She told me, “There was talk about the school shutting down due to an article that was published by Syracuse.com that talked about how the school was in financial trouble, but nothing was officially announced by the school, so we were all kind of left guessing. When the school finally did announce it was shutting down I wasn’t too surprised, but it was sad because all I could think about was how for my senior year I would not be with all of my friends that I had made there. I was worried about having to transfer as well.”
Brown wasn’t a stranger to adversity. In her junior year of high school, she tore her ACL, which would ultimately leave her with not much film to send coaches. She would ultimately decide to come to Cazenovia College due to a preexisting relationship with coach Hannah Tigh.
Brown used to play soccer with Tigh’s son. Following the closing of her school, she was now faced with another hurdle.
“I had no idea where I would transfer, but I knew that wherever I did transfer I wanted to play soccer,” she said. Jenicah had increased the level of her play at Cazenovia, and there wasn’t a shortage of interested schools, with one school of particular interest being Le Moyne College.
“I liked the thought of playing at a higher level than I was playing at Cazenovia, so I began the recruiting process for Le Moyne and ultimately decided that that was where I was going to transfer,” Brown recalled of the decision. Notably, this recruitment came at the time when Le Moyne was still playing at the Division II level. After her commitment came the announcement of the Division I decision.
“…I never thought I would play Division 1 because I was transferring for my senior season, but about a month before it was time to go to Le Moyne for preseason the college announced that they would be transitioning to Division 1 in the fall,” Brown said. It was a big jump, but ultimately Brown would work her way into becoming a key part of Le Moyne women’s soccer’s first Division I team.
When asked about scoring the first goal in Le Moyne’s first Division I win, she said, “It was relieving to finally get a result and show that my team belonged at the Division I level. I was excited that I scored and it meant a lot especially because it was Le Moyne’s first-ever Division I goal.” When people look back however many years from now, her name will be the one that is shown as scoring Le Moyne’s first-ever Division I goal, a goal that emerged out of a series of unlikely circumstances.
