By choosing soccer over hockey, Habuda leads Big South

• Lady Flames soccer player surprisingly chose to play soccer despite coming from a Canadian family that was passionate about hockey.
• Habuda transferred to Liberty from Louisville University and leads the Big South in scoring during her junior year.

Coming from a family and from Canada, where professional hockey rules as the king of sports, Liberty University Lady Flames soccer player Isabella Habuda surprisingly ended up choosing cleats instead of ice skates.

Habuda’s uncle was a player in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Calgary Flames and the New York Islanders, and her grandfather was a respected NHL coach for the Detroit Red Wings and the Winnipeg Jets, winning the NHL Coach of the Year in 1977-78.

But despite her family’s past success on the ice, Habuda’s mother decided that she wanted a different life for her family.

“My mom moved around all the time and didn’t want that for our family,” Habuda said. “She didn’t want to keep on moving and she knew that to get to a high level of hockey, you had to keep moving. We (Habuda and her siblings) stuck with soccer.”

Habuda has played soccer since she was a little girl, always separating herself from the rest of the pack no matter what age group she played in. By growing up in Canada, Habuda was able to stand out even more due to the country’s spotlight focused on hockey.

“I’ve always played soccer, since I was 3,” Habuda said. “At a pretty early age, I started playing competitively. When I was 7, I was asked to play on a travel team who played teams in the States.”

Habuda excelled early on in her soccer career, playing with the travel team during her school’s offseason.

“(From) sixth grade through 12th grade, I played with this team in the States,” Habuda said. “I traveled every day for practices and games.”

In high school, there were days when Habuda wouldn’t return home until after midnight from long drives down to the United States and back, which would result in missing class the next day. Fortunately for Habuda, Canada allows for students to have more school day absences than the United States does.

“Sometimes I wasn’t getting back until two in the morning,” Habuda said. “It was hard on my body. Sometimes I’d miss class at school in the morning. I love soccer, and I knew that I wanted to play soccer, and it helped me to get a scholarship. It put a lot of pressure on my parents. They sacrificed a lot for me but in the end, it was worth it.”

Habuda’s career has certainly been worth it for the schools who have given her the opportunity to play college soccer in the United States.

In 2014-15, Habuda played for Louisville University, where she played in all 36 of their games and started in 17.

As a freshman for the Cardinals, Habuda tied for the team lead in goals scored, finishing the year with three. Habuda finished her two-year career at Louisville with five goals scored, three of them being game-winning shots.

Following her sophomore year of college, the 5-foot-6-inch midfielder transferred to Liberty where she would go on to lead the Big South with 10 goals and start all 21 games for the Lady Flames in her junior season.

In 2017, Habuda has continued to impress, as she has scored five goals while continuing to puzzle defenses.

“She finds space, she drifts into areas that are hard for defenders to track her,” head coach Lang Wedemeyer said. “She pops up in really key points around the box. So much of it is just instinctual.”

Habuda hopes that her natural soccer instincts will lead her to the arena of professional women’s soccer.

“I have a lot of friends in Norway and Sweden and in France and England right now,” Habuda said. “I have a couple of connections, so I’m hoping sometime in January to be over there.”

Whether in Canada, the United States or overseas, Habuda has created a reputation that will follow her wherever she goes – a reputation of hard work, dedication and excellence.