“She was always a team player,” said UA coach Tony Amato of Jill Aguilera, right. “She could have been frustrated and not bought in — a player of her quality not starting. She was as good a teammate as you can be.”

 Mike Christy / Arizona Athletics

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of five on the most underrated Arizona Wildcats athletes.

Jill Aguilera’s freshman year didn’t go as planned. The 5-feet-6-inch forward tore her ACL in her first soccer match.

For Aguilera the injury might have been a setback, yet she overcame that obstacle and progressively improved each season, culminating in a stellar junior year in 2019 where she helped lead the Arizona Wildcats to a 12-7-1 overall record (5-5-1 in Pac-12) and to the second round in the NCAA Tournament.

During her long recovery period what kept her going was what she wasn’t doing — helping her teammates.

That was motivation then and still is for Aguilera. So much so that her jump this past season took it to the next level — understanding each teammate’s strengths and expanding her vision. Playing multiple positions and seeing the field from different vantage points helped.

“I think it helps me appreciate everybody’s position more, and helps me understand where I need to be as a forward to help out a midfielder, to help out a defender,” she said. “And I think when we do drills that help see everyone’s position and our own vision better, I think that this is big, too.

“We talked about knowing what to do with each teammate — where you’re going to pass it to that kind of thing. For instance, for Jada (Talley) she’s very good with at distance, you know, she can run forever. She might prefer the ball in space. Or you take someone like Hannah (Clifford), she’s very good at her feet, you might want to play that ball to her feet more than in space.”

The other part of Aguilera’s story is that she plays alongside one of the top forwards in the Pac-12 — Talley — and she may go unnoticed, despite everything she does.

Why she’s good

Aguilera tallied 20 points last season. She scored nine goals and had two assists, and led the team in shots (56) and shots on goal (24). She scored two goals against Stanford to break the Cardinal’s eight-game shutout streak. She was named to the United Soccer Coaches NCAA Division I Women’s All-Pacific Region Third Team.

She’s fast, athletic and powerful — and is a lefty, which allows her to get into spots and not have to cut back inside.

Jill Aguilera, right, had nine goals last year, including this one against TCU that helped UA to a 4-3 win over the Horned Frogs.

Aguilera is flexible and does whatever it takes to help her team — she starts, comes off the bench and plays in different positions. This makes it harder for other teams to prepare for her.

She is a two-time Pac-12 All-Academic second-team member.

“Her power, her strength and her ability to hit the ball so hard, she’s tapped into that and produced good results. All of those things make her a dynamic attacker,” said head coach Tony Amato. “There are so many different ways she brings value.

“Stats-wise, look at her nine goals and two assists. It’s hard to score and in our league if you get double-digit goals or close, that’s really good. She brought the production and that’s huge.”

Why she’s underrated

She is over-shadowed by her teammate. Talley scored 10 goals and had eight assists for a total of 28 points. She made All-Pacific Region second team and Pac-12 All- Conference first team.

In addition, Aguilera came from a small club in Northern California — Juventus Zebre SC — and got injured right away at UA and didn’t have instant success. She is one of those athletes who has gotten better each season.

“(When we recruited her) she went under the radar,” Amato said. “She was a little raw in skill — but we saw her run and strike the ball. As an athlete she jumped off the page.

“We thought if she’s coachable and develops, she capable.

“Then, she took an obstacle (her injury) and made it into a positive. She was out of the game for 9-12 months. I think any time the game is taken away it fuels your passion and fire. She really improved — she watched from the sideline, learned and grew. She had a breakout year in her third season – it all came together.”

Coachspeak

“She came off the bench in five, six or seven games. She was always a team player. She could have been frustrated and not bought in — a player of her quality not starting. She was as good a teammate as you could be. Not a lot of people could handle it like Jill did. She was pleasant, a good attitude. She never moped. There were no bad games.” — Amato

She said it

“At Arizona, everybody is super good and everybody can be on the field. And I think that for me — and I know that Jada and I talk about this all the time — we don’t care who scores, we just want to win. I don’t care; I do not care who scores who is on the stat sheet, I just want us as a team to be able to win. And I think that both of us having that mindset helped us win more games, regardless who scores.

“I just love watching our team highlights after we score no matter who scores. I love watching everybody huddled together and hug — and then you see it on video.

“When Arizona Soccer posts it and it’s like a flashback right back into that situation. You remember seeing it — like an assist to a goal that was insane. I watch it all the time now and it makes me miss it so much that we can’t do it now, but I’m really excited for this fall.” — Aguilera

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