By BUTCH HARMON
Lake Fenton senior forward Jordan Newman’s job is to score goals, and no one in the history of Michigan high school girls’ soccer has done that job better.
Earlier this year, Newman set the record for career goals scored when she recorded her 168th goal. By the middle of May, she had totaled 29 goals on the year and had moved her career total to 183.
“Jordan is just an all-around great soccer player,” said her coach Lenny Glasstetter. “Her job is to score goals, and she is very good at it. She is fast, has great timing, knows how to set up her opponents, and finishes with a lot of power. She gets a lot of her goals on headers and volleys. She also has great accuracy. She is probably shooting at about 50 percent.”
Newman has been a big goal scorer since the day she stepped into the Blue Devils’ starting lineup as a freshman. She finished her freshman year with 40 goals, scored 56 as a sophomore, and tallied 58 goals last year as a junior.
She is a little off last year’s scoring pace, but that is no surprise to her coach. “Everybody is putting three or four players on her in every game,” Glasstetter said. “She is still going to score a lot of goals. I’m sure she will end up with over 40.”
While her goals may be down a little this year, her overall production is still high. “She has always been good at setting her teammates up, but this year even more so,” Glasstetter said. “She is not a player who shoots the ball every time she touches it. Defenders don’t know if she is going to shoot the ball or pass it when she gets the ball.”
Setting the career scoring record was very special for Newman. “It was an awesome feeling,” she said. “It was a great accomplishment. Everything I worked so hard for, all the goals that I scored, it means something even more now.”
The record-setting goal was one that Newman will never forget. “Going into that game, I needed three goals, and I thought about what it would be like to score that goal,”she said. “I wondered who would assist me on that play, and I was hoping it would be someone I played with all four years. It ended up being our center back, Brenna Meicher, who I grew up playing soccer with. She kicked the ball over the back line, and I ended up with it and shot it in.”
Setting the all-time scoring record was not something that Newman planned for. “When I started playing high school soccer, I scored a lot of goals, but I never thought about a record until I broke our high school’s record for goals,” she said. “It was the beginning of my junior year when I broke the school record that I thought about the state record, but it was not something I tried to do. I just go out and try to score goals, and the records come with it.”
Newman is focused on helping her team advance as far as it can in the upcoming state tournament. “I feel like this is the best year we’ve had since I’ve been in high school,” she said. “I feel that we have a shot to go a long way in the state tournament, and this is our best year for that.”
After high school, Newman will continue her soccer career at Charleston Southern University in South Carolina. Newman chose that college over Oakland University, Butler University, and Florida Gulf Coast University.