NAU head soccer coach Andre Luciano has produced 91 Big Sky All-Academic selections and eight NSCAA Team Academic Awards in his 10 years at the helm. So when the time came for recruits to sign their national letters of intent, he was not about to let one of Flagstaff’s own leave town, especially one with a 4.25 GPA.
“The most important thing is we don’t want to see the best girls in Flagstaff leave,” Luciano said. “For us, to get a player of Diane [Buzzard]’s caliber was extremely important for us because not only is she a good soccer player, but she’s a great student and a very, very good person.”
Buzzard, a senior defender on the soccer team at Flagstaff High School (FHS), is one of nine highly regarded recruits to commit to the NAU soccer program on Feb. 2 and will help fill the void left by the departure of three graduated defenders.
NAU was not always the first choice for Buzzard; she was also being recruited by Colorado School of Mines and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
“When I first started out, I wrote off NAU,” Buzzard said. “I was like, ‘no way,’ and I wanted to get out of here. But as I matured a little bit, I realized that [NAU] was the best fit for me, and this is where I wanted to be. It means a lot to me [to be able to stay in Flagstaff] because playing soccer here is going to be everything.”
Even though Buzzard first started playing soccer at the age of 10, she made an immediate impact as soon as she stepped on the field at FHS. In fact, NAU assistant coach and former FHS head coach Holly Jones knew at that point that Buzzard, a freshman starter on the 4A DII State Championship team, was a special player.
“She had a great work rate, just naturally athletic,” Jones said. “You could see that she would be able to make it to the next level as long as she continued to push herself.”
But Buzzard was not about to stop after playing an integral part of a state title-winning squad as a freshman. She would go on to be a four-year varsity starter, four-time First Team All-City selection and two-time First Team All-Region selection — all while winning her second state championship on Feb. 11 to wrap up her FHS career after finishing her junior season as state runner-up.
“Playing sweeper, she’s the heart of the defense and she’s very vocal out there,” said current FHS head coach David Meyers. “Having her out there is like having a second coach on the field, but she has so much going for her besides being a fantastic soccer player. She’s just a really nice person, and I’m happy that I’ll be able to go watch her play [at NAU] for the next four years.”
In addition to her numerous soccer honors, Buzzard is stands out off the field. Aside from maintaining a 4.25 GPA — keeping her tied for the valedictorian honor with her boyfriend — she is also a member of the National Honor Society, CHICCS club (a community service organization) and the LINKS mentorship program in which she mentors freshmen at FHS. More impressively, she is one of 44 finalists out of 580 applicants for the coveted Flinn Scholarship, the top Arizona merit scholarship.
“I’m looking to go into environmental engineering,” Buzzard said. “Academics is everything to me. It’s definitely my top priority, and I know that’s what’s going to carry me once I’m done with soccer, so my education comes first.”
Buzzard will be asked to reload the Lumberjack defensive backline after the loss of recent graduate Kristi Andreassen. Andreassen was a three-time All-Big Sky First Team selection and is the reigning ESPN Academic All-American of the Year for the women’s soccer university division, something Buzzard is well aware of.
“[Andreassen]’s a model athlete, person and student, so there’s some big shoes to fill if that’s what I’m supposed to be doing,” Buzzard said. “She’s amazing, and she’s definitely a player I look up to the most. If I can halfway fill those shoes, that’d be great.”
But despite the similarities between Buzzard and Andreassen, Luciano said he does not want to place any pressure on his new recruit by comparing the two.
“Both [players] are Type-A personalities and super positive human beings,” Luciano said. “Diane has the potential to become a dominant defender, but we don’t want to put too much pressure on her. The most important thing is once we get her on campus, she continues to grow. I know she’s going to wear her heart on her sleeve and bleed blue and gold for the program, and that’s what we want out of our local players.”
So in the end, NAU got its kid, and Buzzard is staying in Flagstaff. In a way, the story has come full-circle, as Jones will be coaching Buzzard as a freshman for the second time. If round two turns out to be anything like the first, NAU soccer fans sure have a lot to look forward to in the next four years.
“She’s such a good kid, and I’m just looking forward to being around her again,” Jones said. “She’s a coach’s dream kid.”
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