McALLEN — Ayloni Garcia calls it her “magic.”
It’s that time during a soccer match when you see her, then you don’t. It leaves defenders puzzled, often times looking like renditions of the old Keystone Cops, and concludes with the ball somehow reappearing in the back of the net — Harry Houdini or David Blaine style.
After a season with a whopping 59 goals and 34 assists (while missing four district games), the McAllen Rowe star has earned The Monitor’s All-Area Girls Soccer Player of the Year.
“Pound for pound, Ayloni is the most talented player in the RGV,” Rowe head coach John Martinez said. “She’s easily the best player I have coached in 16 years at Rowe.”
Garcia began her high school career at Mission High, earning newcomer of the year accolades. She transferred after that year to Rowe, where she had to sit out from varsity due to the UIL 365-day rule. In her two seasons on varsity at Rowe, she scored 94 goals, breaking the school record of 86 previously held by Martinez’s younger sister.
But her goal-scoring doesn’t tell the entire story of her value for the Warriors. Often times she was marked by one or two players all over the pitch, then had to face the keeper and maybe another defender as she regularly left the first two behind.
In the second round of the playoffs against Corpus Christi Flour Bluff, after scoring both goals in a 2-1 overtime victory over Harlingen South, Garcia received the ball downfield, stopped and started again on a dime, crossed over to ditch her second defender and scored on a quick left foot shot that clinched a thrilling 5-4 victory and sent the Warriors to a third-round match against city rival McAllen High.
“Those playoff games were crazy,” Garcia said. “I told my team every game that as a senior I am going to leave everything on the field. This is the game I love to play and I’m going to give them hell, even if we were down, it wasn’t over.”
Her second goal was SportsCenter-esque as a pair of defenders swarmed her.
“First, Camila (Gil) sent me the ball but the defender was actually in front of me and got the ball first,” Garcia said. “I gave the girl a push — I know I did, but I really wanted it. Then the second defender came at me. I did my magic, turned and shot, then saw it in the back of the net.”
“Those Flour Bluff goals were probably the most meaningful,” Martinez said. “It was the game-winner and the way she did it. It sealed that victory.”
Defenses were all over Garcia, several of them knowing they couldn’t match her step for step, so often times it would turn physical.
“Defenders would see me and think, ‘She’s small, I can take her,’ so I would get shoved around and took a couple of hits,” Garcia said. After every game, every hit would hurt and I had to ice down, take ice baths with bruises and cuts, but I knew I left everything on those fields.”
The tenacious star will take her talents to the Division I level next year, signing her National Letter of Intent to play at UTRGV.
“It’s going to be tougher because I’m really small and a lot of coaches doubted me, but it made me work harder,” she said. “I knew I wanted to play at the next level and would have to put in more work, extra work. And I did it.”
