At Bishop Amat, it’s not uncommon to find students wearing college sweaters, most often representing USC or UCLA. At one table however, you can find two best friends wearing a Stanford University sweater and a Brown University sweater.

Unlike most students, these two already know what school they are going to.

Bishop Amat High School boasts two highly recruited soccer stars in seniors Sophia Serafin and Nicole Diaz.

Serafin committed early in her sophomore year to Stanford University while Diaz waited until the beginning of her senior year to commit to Brown University.

“Most colleges want you to commit at the end of freshman year,” Serafin said. “I did it early sophomore year because I wanted to wait to make sure I had the grades.”

Diaz, however, was a little more hesitant in making her decision.

“I have been recruited since freshman year, but I didn’t like any of the schools. I wanted to go out east away from home,” Diaz said.

According to Forbes, Stanford is the No. 1 college in America while Brown is No. 14.

For Serafin and Diaz, soccer has become the means of achieving a lifelong dream: playing soccer at a top-level university.

Even though both girls have a grade point average of over 4.5, earning acceptance still would have been difficult.

Stanford has a 4.8 percent acceptance rate while Brown’s is nine percent.

Diaz thinks her GPA might have earned her admission into Brown, but Serafin believes Stanford would have been impossible.

“No. Soccer is the only reason why I got into Stanford,” Serafin said.

Both began playing the sport at a young age and immediately fell in love with it. Around seventh grade, the dream of what could be became a reality.

“Club soccer became more serious around middle school because everyone was competing in front of college recruits,” Diaz said.

Serafin, unlike Diaz, has also participated in the United States’ National Soccer program since eighth grade.“I don’t think that I’d be able to play for the U.S. National team, but I think I could play professionally,” she said “Pro women’s soccer isn’t that big.”

Serafin, who hasn’t played for Bishop Amat since her freshman year, has come to lead the squad as a captain to a CIF title.

The program hasn’t won a title since 2013, the year before the two arrived at the school.

Diaz, who also serves as a captain, believes that this is their year.

“We’ve all been playing for four years together in high school,” she said. “This is our last chance. It would be a disappointment if we didn’t win CIF.”

Because of CIF’s new playoff equity format, girl’s soccer has dropped from Division 2 to Division 3, which puts even more pressure on the team.

They opened the season with an emphatic 9-0 win over South El Monte earlier this week to open the season. Serafin and Diaz combined for four of the goals.

“Sophia and Nicole are really important to our team,” Karissa Serna, a four-year starter, said. “We’re so happy Sophia decided to come back this year. We all look up to her and her skills.”

Bishop Amat has three more Division 1 college commits in Alex Jaquez (University of California, Berkeley), Danielle Herrera (University of California, Riverside), and Isabelle Juarez (Texas Christian University).

However, these girls recognize Serafin and Diaz’s talents on and off the field.

“It makes my job a whole lot easier as a goalie because Sophia can pin them down near their net, and Nicole is a rock on defense,” Herrera said.

Serafin and Diaz have bright futures ahead of them. The scholarships are guaranteed even if they have a career ending injury.

They can use this top level education to enhance their abilities as students to better prepare themselves for the real world.

“I think that Nicole and Sophia have the utmost potential to be whoever they want to be in life, but they need to continue their perseverance, hard work, and dedication,” close friend and classmate Pablo Diaz explained.

Good things are to come for these two soccer stars.

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