WASHINGTON TERRACE — When Sadie Beardall was first playing soccer around the age of 5, she’d wear a large bow in her hair put in there by her mom, Jennifer.

“That’s how she’d spot me on the field and I was the one running all over with the ball, I would seriously just take off like a chipmunk with the ball and score,” Sadie Beardall said.

Years later and not much has changed, except that the best way to pick out Beardall on the field is to find the forward running all over the field wearing bright-colored cleats.

Beardall, now a junior forward on Bonneville High’s girls soccer team, has made a habit of scoring goals in droves since her freshman year and normally runs other teams ragged in games.

“If I lose (the ball) or one of my teammates loses it, we switch, transition to get the ball back,” Beardall said, snapping her fingers. “That’s when it gets super intense.”

This year, Beardall scored a team-high 25 goals with a team-high 14 assists, constantly pressured other teams’ ball handlers all over the field, playing a big role as the Lakers won the Region 5 title and advanced to the state semifinals.

Beardall is the 2021 Standard-Examiner All-Area Girls Soccer Most Valuable Player.

Bonneville head coach Tyler Anderson called Beardall a “relentless attacker” who never slows down and loves trying to do what it takes for her team to win games, whether it’s trying to score on her own, setting up a teammate, or pressuring the opponent into a bad pass.

Teams who played Bonneville this year probably felt it in their legs the next day after having to keep up with Beardall for 70-plus minutes in a game, along with being on the losing end of a Lakers win.

“She never gives up and for some reason, never gets tired,” Anderson said. “Everything is always ‘We need to do it now, and I need to play hard now, and I need to make the right run and I need to try to score now.'”

Patrick Carr, Standard-Examiner

Beardall has a lot of confidence in herself, but this year she wanted to have more fun with the game.

“Whenever someone wants to take me out (with a slide tackle), I’m like OK, you can sure try, but I’d always look at my family on the sidelines and say you know what, I’m gonna play for them, I’m gonna have a lot of fun,” she said.

Beardall also has a very analytical mind when it comes to soccer. She has things all figured out when it comes to not just pressuring opposing ball handlers, but how to pressure them to set her team up for a steal.

One reason she spent so much time thinking about soccer this year is that the Lakers played on the turf football field instead of the grass field, meaning the ball, and subsequently the game itself, moved a lot faster.

“It’s just very important to me,” Beardall said. “People taught me to prepare myself for the game.”

Beardall, who’s currently verbally committed to Utah Valley, watches a lot of college and pro soccer and has thought about soccer so much, on game days particularly, that she has daydreamed about the sport in class.

“I did get caught once. (My teacher) thought I was half asleep, I put my head down just thinking about it, but she thought I was sleeping,” Beardall said.

Patrick Carr, Standard-Examiner

In the 2019 and 2020 seasons, Beardall and attacking midfielder/forward Summer Diamond have formed one of the best attacking duos in high school soccer.

Diamond missed several games with a knee injury this year. Beardall said she both did and didn’t feel a little more pressure to score or create more goals in Diamond’s absence.

No matter what ultimately motivated her, Beardall either scored or assisted 39 of Bonneville’s 47 goals this season. Few players in the state had that level of direct involvement in their team’s goalscoring.

At the same time, Beardall always deferred goalscoring credit to her teammates no matter if she scored directly from a cross or if she went on a slaloming run through the defense.

“When I did score and the ball went in the goal, I would always look at the person that gave me the ball and say thank you, I wouldn’t have scored if you didn’t get me the ball,” she said.

Two games stood out this year to Beardall, the first being a 1-0 win against Murray in the state quarterfinals where she made a late penalty kick. The other was her four-goal game against Bountiful that secured a repeat Region 5 title for the Lakers.

Another game stood out in a bad way: the gut-wrenching, 2-1 semifinal loss to Lehi, which meant not being able to play another game with her senior teammates.

It was the third playoff heartbreak in as many seasons for the Lakers. The 2019 and 2020 seasons ended on golden goals in the state title game and in 2021, they didn’t get to Rio Tinto Stadium at all.

Time has flown by for the girl who came into the varsity team as a freshman with total respect for the juniors and seniors who had put in their time before her.

“I was really hoping I’d play one more game with the seniors, now they’re telling me like good luck,” Beardall said. “I want to give it my all next year.”

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