Biography
By Jim Hague
It’s safe to say that Kathleen Jironza was born to play the sport of soccer.
After all, her father, Jimmy, was a fine soccer player in his native Ecuador when he was growing up.
“I guess I started kicking the soccer ball when I was like 3 or 4 years old,” Jironza said. “If I wasn’t on a soccer field for like six or seven days a week, it was a miracle. I was always with the ball on a soccer field somewhere. My dad was a major influence on me.”
But then again, so was her older sister, Ashley, who played soccer first at Hackensack High School and later Rutgers-Newark.
“I always admired my sister,” Jironza said. “I always watched her play when I was younger. I knew that I would eventually follow in her footsteps.”
Sure enough, when it came time to pick a college to play soccer, Kathleen Jironza followed the path blazed by her older sister. She decided to attend Rutgers-Newark.
Rutgers-Newark head women’s soccer coach Bill Bustamante was aware of the Jironza family when he took the job as head coach of the Scarlet Raiders.
“I knew of Kathleen and I knew that her older sister had played here,” Bustamante said. “I know the family, so I had an idea of the kind of player I was inheriting.”
Last summer, Bustamante wanted to make a complete overhaul with his team.
“I wanted to have kids who loved to play, kids who were more dedicated to playing,” Bustamante said. “I didn’t want kids who made excuses not to be here. I had to change the culture of our program and bring in a new wave of soccer players. That’s been the hardest part, getting that different mentality.”
With that change in mind, Bustamante counted on Jironza.
“She’s one of the foundation building blocks of the change,” Bustamante said. “She’s the ideal example. She has the right attitude, the right approach. She has the right work rate. She’s at every single practice, every game, always working hard. In fact, she’s the hardest working player we have out there.”
Bustamante said that Jironza underwent an attitude transformation last year.
“She decided to take things more seriously,” Bustamante said. “I told her that she had to either come in and make an impact or not play. She had to put her fingerprints on this team. Now, it speaks volumes what she’s done. The other people should look at her and see the way she performs every day and try to mirror it.”
“I had a few days where I didn’t take it seriously enough and it bothered me,” said Jironza, a junior defensive midfielder. I always thought I took it seriously and I don’t like it when other girls don’t. It’s a really good feeling now that I do my job and I have a lot of confidence being out there. If they follow me and do their job, then we’ll all be better for it.”
There’s another aspect to Jironza’s game that makes her stand out. It would be her height – or better yet, her lack of it.
Jironza is listed at 5-foot-2, but more than likely, she’s a little shorter than that. So it’s a challenge for Jironza to defend some of the bigger and taller players in the NJAC.
“What makes her overcome the disadvantage is that she’s a smart player,” Bustamante said. “She’s smarter than most. She’s technically sound, but I’m always amazed how smart she is. She constantly puts herself in a good situation. She does what she has to do to overcome the height differences. She might be matched up with someone who is bigger and stronger, but she somehow finds a way to overcome those obstacles. I think it’s an attribute that makes her a little more special than the rest.”
Jironza said that she just faced a major challenge in a recent match against The College of New Jersey.
“The girl I was marking might have won every header, because she was a lot taller than me,” Jironza said. “But I really worked hard to win the balls on the ground. It’s always a motivation for me to play against taller players. I try to do different things to get to the ball. I seriously end up with bruises everywhere, but I have a big heart to go after the ball all the time. I do what I have to do to get the ball and I totally forget about size.”
Bustamante believes that Jironza’s intelligence and knowledge of the game helps more than anything.
“I really think that her intelligence gives her an advantage over other opponents,” Bustamante said. “She’s a very competitive person and she doesn’t give up. When things don’t go her way, she has that nastiness that gets the job done. But once the game is over, she’s smiling and happy. She’s an emotional person and brings that emotion to the game. She’s a great kid, a great student athlete and we’re lucky to have her.”
Jironza is majoring in journalism and media studies at Rutgers-Newark. She hasn’t officially declared her intentions, but that’s where she’s leaning.
“I’d love to do something in sports,” Jironza said. “I love writing, so that might be a possibility. I don’t know yet.”
Jironza just took her first journalism class at R-N in basic reporting.
“I think that’s where I want to go,” Jironza said.
Although it hasn’t been a highly successful campaign this year – the Scarlet Raiders have won only one of 11 matches thus far – Jironza believes that they can turn things around.
“We have a better team than our record shows,” Jironza said. “We’re making little mistakes and they’re costing us. If we fix that, we can be successful. It’s the little things we have to fix.”
And who knows? There might be yet another Jironza playing in the future. The youngest sister, Jailene, is a freshman soccer player at Hasbrouck Heights.
“She’s definitely fitting in with the rest of us,” Jironza said.
