Bleeding Bruin Blue Athlete of the Week: August 24-30

This week proved to be a difficult week to determine the Athlete of the Week. Boys soccer and both cross country teams undermined their efforts with only one game that I have information for, crippling their approach in counting statistics. Tennis and volleyball would have both been pretty good choices for a team of the week award; however, the first word in the award's title is "Athlete," not "Team." Both of these teams had a number of legitimate qualifiers for AOW, but it would have been impossible to name one player, and not another with a very similar stat line.

Our girls soccer team played three games this week, winning 1-0 twice and losing 0-3. Scoring two goals in three games is generally not a great way to get recognized for offensive performance; save for 15 shoddy minutes in the first half against Northridge, the defense was holding us in games despite a statistically poor offensive performance. I didn't see any of our girls games this week, leaving me to judge by the stat lines. In these stat lines, only one player was noted for defensive reasons: junior goalkeeper Kelly Snyder, with 10.67 saves per game and a 66.7 percent shutout rate. For these reasons, Snyder is the Bleeding Bruin Blue Athlete of the Week for August 24-30.

SELECTION: Some of the more astute readers among you may notice that a number of references are made above to what I saw last week. This is because, for the second week in a row, no nominations were received. While I am the final judge of who becomes athlete of the week, the selection process is built around nominations. Because of this, if you have disagreed with my choices either this week or last, there's a fairly simple solution to this for the week of August 31: nominate someone. The process for nomination is detailed here.