Lang, Quisenberry capped historic soccer careers with school records this fall

The year 2021 ended an era that Columbus soccer hasn’t experienced.

For Columbus North senior Jenna Lang and Columbus East senior Chris Quisenberry, both likely will go down as one of the top players if not, the top players their respective programs have witnessed.

Lang and Quisenberry etched themselves into the history books this year, breaking nearly every career school record along the way.

Lang finished her high school career with records for 116 total goals and 262 individual points (two points for a goal and one point for an assist). In her junior season, she set the single-season goals record with 44 and individual points record with 99.

“My freshman year, I never really thought that I’d imagine being where I am now, but I had those goals in mind,” Lang said. After my freshman season, I didn’t have as many goals, but I think that was a building block for my future years at North and what I was able to do. Looking back on it now, I would say I’m really happy with all of the work I was able to put in, but also my team and my coaches that helped me, as well. I’m thankful moreso that I was able to do it and complete it.”

Quisenberry finished his high school career with a record 61 total goals and 31 assists. In his senior season, he set the single season goals scored record with 26.

“It was absolutely amazing when I broke the record, especially coming from a standpoint that I told myself that I wanted to break that my freshman year,” Quisenberry said. “It was more so validating after my sophomore year because I knew I had a chance to get it. For me to get it this year was really, really nice for me.”

Humble beginnings

Quisenberry started playing soccer for Parks and Recreation when he was 3 years old. When he was 6, he transferred over to Columbus Express Academy. He stayed with the Express until he was 13. From there, he moved on to South Central Soccer Academy in Bargersville for one year before heading to his current Alliance team.

Like Quisenberry, Lang got her start playing soccer at about 3 years old with Parks and Rec, where her father was her coach. When she was 8, she moved to Columbus Express, where she started working with Dane Whitley. After a year, Lang started working with Kenrick Ramirez, who was the Columbus Express Soccer Club director of coaching at the time. When Ramirez moved to become the girls director of coaching for Indy Premier in 2016, Lang joined Indy Premier shortly after in 2017 and has been with Indy Premier since.

When Quisenberry played on the U12 team with the Express, the goalkeeper on the team broke his arm, and Quisenberry was the replacement. He was successful as a goalkeeper, but his coaches ultimately decided it was best suited for Quisenberry to play up top.

Since then, Quisenberry has excelled at becoming a striker.

“I have so much respect for goalkeepers now. It’s not an easy position,” Quisenberry said. “It is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I also think it helped me grow as a field player now because I know how goalkeepers think more often than not, and I can do things before they wouldn’t necessarily think of it. It definitely helped me on my path to becoming a field player.”

Being the youngest of seven siblings, soccer was already in the DNA of Lang. She recalls watching her two sisters, Hayden and Addy, play soccer at the high school level when she was growing up. Knowing she wanted to go to North to play high school soccer, Jenna watched many of Addy’s games.

Addy eventually left her mark with the Bull Dog program. Once Jenna entered the North program, there was always the thought of trying to live up to her family’s previous excellence and expectations. Jenna lived up to it better than expected.

“I always wanted to make an impact like my sister did,” Lang said. “I didn’t know what impact I would have on the team or what role I would play, but I think that she left the legacy or the expectation for me to hold up whenever I entered high school.”

Quisenberry got major support from his mom Rachel and his stepfather Denis Reynolds and said that he wouldn’t be the player or person he is today without them. He added that his uncle and aunt, Tony and Patricia McClendon have mentioned to him that he always needed to work hard to earn that spot.

Quisenberry mentioned that former East boys soccer coach Brad Barber helped him open up his perspective that bad things can happen on the field, but more importantly, how to bounce back from it. He also mentioned teammate Korbin Hatcher as someone that really helped push him to make that extra step.

Quisenberry added that he looked up to Eric Stiles and Jorge Nieto when they led the charge in helping East have its most successful season in school history, making the Class 3A Final Four in 2019.

“They were mentors to me, and I really looked up to them,” Quisenberry said. “They taught me a bunch of lessons about what it took to succeed at the next level and what I had to do to be ready for that.”

Ramirez got to see how both Lang and Quisenberry develop as soccer players. When Ramirez first worked with Lang, he recalled that Lang always had the drive to excel, and most people noticed her ability to strike the ball really well because it was measurable.

Ramirez said another factor that has helped Lang stand out among the rest is her brain.

“The thing about it is that Jenna was never the biggest, she was never the strongest, she was never the fastest, and she had to work on being extremely technical to be able to compete at the highest level because she didn’t have those physical tools that some of those other top soccer players have,” Ramirez said. “The thing about her soccer IQ, when you talk about athleticism, when you talk about some of the physical tools, her athletic brain, the top players have an athletic brain, that willingness to win, that willingness to compete, that willingness to solve problems before they happen. So the focus was to be extremely technical and develop her soccer IQ that she really had at a higher level, and that’s what separates her and that’s what makes her special.”

North girls coach David Young has a word that makes Lang stand out against the other competitors on the pitch.

“I would say ‘intensity’ would be one word,” Young said. “There were numerous games throughout the last three years that you could pinpoint something occurred either prior to a game or within the game that pushed her and brought that intensity even more than she normally does, and whenever that’s there, look out.”

Ramirez didn’t spend as much time with Quisenberry as he did with Lang, but said that as with Lang, Quisenberry’s brain is what stood out to him.

“He had a brain that always wanted to win, always wanted to compete, and one thing I loved about Chris was his background, his story, so my initial connection to Chris was not soccer. It was him as a person and his background and his family dynamics,” Ramirez said. “He’s athletic, he’s strong, he’s fast. At that point in time, comparable to what we know, he had the natural taste of a forward, now not necessarily a finisher because a forward and a finisher do two different things, but he spent as a forward to become that finisher, and he just blossomed.”

Youth movement

While it is the most popular sport in the world, soccer wasn’t one of the top choices for American residents in the 20th Century. However, it’s no secret that soccer has been gaining a lot of traction over the past two decades.

According to a report by Gallup in 2018, 7% of all American adults cited soccer as their favorite sports to watch, making it the fourth most popular with football (37%), basketball (11%) and baseball (9%) being ahead.

Looking at the numbers deeper, soccer is well on its way of overtaking baseball for the third most popular sport and could challenge basketball for second. For adults aged 55 and older, only 1% favored soccer, 14% baseball and 11% basketball. For ages 18-34, soccer soared to 11%, tying basketball at 11% and with only 6% going with baseball. For ages 35 to 54, basketball was at 12%, soccer at 10% and baseball at 7%.

The success of United States Women’s National Team has a lot to do with the soaring popularity. The USWNT winning the 1999 World Cup on penalty kicks in dramatic fashion on its home soil helped springboard the popularity. The team winning the past two World Cups in 2015 and 2019 only catapulted the popularity.

It also helped having some of the world’s top soccer stars like David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thierry Henry and Wayne Rooney playing in the MLS in the latter stages of their careers to help showcase soccer more in the U.S.

Soccer is seen on the national broadcasts much more frequently, and the presence of social media has also big a huge role where players and fans can interact with each other.

“It’s grown tremendously over the last few years with regards to access. A lot of people have access to watch and to learn. I think 10 years ago, when a coach is talking to a parent or players, the education level in terms of the game was limited,” Ramirez said. “Now I think people can have conversations because the knowledge is out there. Now, the opinion of that knowledge can quite differ, but that’s the beauty of the game. There’s so many ways to view it, but with all the access and with the internet and online, there’s so much that is out there that has helped people to understand the game.”

One way that has helped soccer grow among the youth is player escorting, which is a child that accompanies a soccer player as they enter the pitch. There were various reasons this practice started appearing in soccer 20 years ago, but today, it has become a tradition that allows younger fans and kids to have a special moment and experience the opportunity to walk out in front of the fans, perhaps beside one of their favorite soccer players.

This experience is displayed at almost every North and East home game.

“I always think about how I was in their shoes one day, as well. Looking up to my sisters and the older players, and I was like, ‘I want to be there’ and do that,” Lang said. “The community outreach has gotten so much bigger and broader. It has reached a lot more kids and has grown not only the Express program, but for the North program and the East program. The girls came to games, they watched and supported, they knew the names of the players and would always cheer and support. Being able to walk out on the field before games, I think that was really cool.”

Leaving a legacy

During their careers, Quisenberry and Lang took their programs to historic levels.

Lang took the Bull Dogs to the Class 3A Final Four as a junior and was hoping to lead them to their first state final since 2010, when soccer was then a one-class system.

Kayleigh (Steigerwalt) Jones was one of the top North girls soccer players from a decade ago who previously held the single-season and career goal-scoring records until Lang broke both of them her junior and senior years, respectively. Following high school, Jones went on to play soccer at Indiana University for about 2 1/2 years. Between her sophomore and junior years at IU, she tore her ACL. After she redshirted a year, she found out she needed two more additional knee surgeries before her senior year. She decided to call it a career following the additional knee surgeries.

Jones works as a director for a PR agency that specializes for software companies in Indianapolis. She married her husband Adam a former North baseball player on Oct. 10, 2020.

Last year, Jones first heard of the possibly of Lang potentially breaking her school record. Once Lang broke the single season, Jones mentioned she reached out to Lang to congratulate her on breaking the record. Jones added that she didn’t hear about Lang breaking her all-time goal scoring record until early November.

“It’s such a big accomplishment, and I know it got me thinking about that moment when I broke Lindsey (Fox’s) record and kind of let me reminisce a little bit about it, but I know when I was on the path to beating the record, there’s no way I could have done it without my team. We had such an incredible team at the time, but I will say it does take a lot of drive and determination on a personal level, as well,” Jones said. “Breaking the record isn’t something that everyone achieves, so it’s definitely proof of her hard work and her ambition and obviously, her talent as a soccer player. I also think it’s a testament to the program, the fact that these records continue to get broken decade after decade truly says something.”

Quisenberry helped the Olympians to three sectional titles and was an instrumental part in helping East get to its first Class 3A Final Four appearance in 2019.

When Quisenberry is done practicing for the day and has a night off from a game, it’s not surprising to see him in the stands for the North games or the East girls games.

“I think Chris sums up the motto of our program perfectly, and it’s, ‘Passion.’ That’s been our motto for quite some time,” East boys coach Josh Gonsior said. “We really feel passionate about the game, and he is a student of the game. He’ll go to games and watch other people play. Not just looking at it from a fan perspective, but seeing what he can learn and try to get better and improve on himself, and he does bring that passion to every training session, every game, and you can really feel his energy on and off the field.”

Lang, who will be continuing her soccer career at Michigan, saw her senior year and high school career of soccer get cut short because of a sprained MCL and PCL in her right knee in a game against Bloomington South on Sept. 20. For the second year in a row, she was selected to the United Soccer Coaches High School Girls All-American Fall team. She was named to the USC All-Great Lakes Region girls squad and received first-team All-State honors this year.

“I think that my goal in general was not to only be a good soccer player, but also like a leader to my teammates and those younger than me, as well. I think that my legacy, you could call it, is not only about the records, but more how we bought into coach Dave’s program whenever he came in and how it kind of became what it was in the past three seasons,” Lang said. “I think that seeing all of the positive response from the community and the incoming freshmen this year, it’s rewarding to see that not only I’m making an impact, but also the team coming together and making an impact on the younger girls, as well.”

Quisenberry received postseason accolades, being named to the USC All-Great Lakes Region boys squad and receiving first-team All-State honors.

“I think I signified myself as a great player, but an even better person,” Quisenberry said. “I think I’ll go down one of the best goal scorers, if not, players in East history, and I’m really, really thankful for that.”