Programs with championship cultures have “a next player up” mentality. If one player goes down, someone else is ready to step in and make a seamless transition, with the full backing of the team’s leadership. There is no better example than the Bucknell women’s soccer team, where two years running the squad lost a veteran central defender early in the season. Not only was a sophomore ready to fill in at this critical position, but they were part of smothering defenses that carried the Bison to back-to-back championships.
The first instance came in the fall of 2021, when senior co-captain Holly Burns was injured just two games into the season. Brooke Tracey, then a sophomore with just one career appearance under her belt – a reserve stint as a forward during the modified spring 2021 COVID season – suddenly found herself in the starting back four. Against 12th-ranked West Virginia.
“I was so excited for that West Virginia game,” Brooke recalls. “I wasn’t nervous, I was just fired up and ready to go. I didn’t even call my parents to tell them I was starting. Fortunately, my dad came to the game, and everyone else watched from home.”
Bucknell grabbed an early lead that night against the Mountaineers at Emmitt Field, but WVU eventually netted the go-ahead goal on a penalty kick in the second half. Still, that competitive game against a nationally ranked side filled the Bison with confidence, and a strong 90-minute shift from Brooke cemented her spot in the lineup.
Bucknell went on to post three straight shutouts in the Patriot League Tournament and played Rutgers tough in a 2-0 loss in the NCAA Tournament. Brooke credits her more experienced back-line mates for helping her succeed in her first year as a starter, none more than Holly, who had to watch from the sideline for most of the season, although she would later play an important role coming back as a midfielder in the postseason.
“Holly was amazing. She was so helpful to me and only cared about the team winning. She and Claire Mensi were such great captains that year, and both happened to play defense, so I could not have asked for two better mentors. Leanne [Engemann] was the same way last year. Even though she wasn’t playing as much, she was always upbeat and just wanted the team to succeed. Now that I’m a captain and a senior, I’m taking a lot of what I learned from them as leaders.”
Brooke actually found herself in that veteran position last year, when an early season injury to a center back happened again. This time it was Eva Frankovic, a junior who had just transferred in from Pittsburgh. She went down with a knee issue in the third game of the season at Air Force, and this time it was sophomore Olivia DeConinck who was ready to step in. Olivia played the final 68 minutes in Colorado Springs and helped the Bison see out a 1-0 win, and she went on to start for the remainder of the season on a defensive unit that tied a school record with 11 shutouts. For the second year in a row, the Bison did not concede a goal in the Patriot League Tournament, and they repeated as league champs by winning penalty kick shootouts against Boston University and Army.
“I just think that’s something special about our team. Of course you hope injuries never happen, but we feel like there’s always someone ready to go just in case.”
As the anchor of a back line that had three first-year starters surrounding her, Brooke took her game to a new level in 2022 and emerged as one of the team’s most important players and one of the league’s best and most durable defenders. She earned Third Team All-Patriot League honors and was one of only two players in the Patriot League to play every minute of every game.
Brooke has a special kinship with Jenna Hall, the reigning Patriot League Goalkeeper of the Year. Both came to Bucknell from the state of Connecticut and were club teammates at CFC United, so this is actually their seventh season playing together.
Brooke committed to coach Kelly Cook before Jenna, and in fact, she didn’t even realize Jenna was considering Bucknell until Jenna called to tell her she was coming to Lewisburg too.
“That was just an amazing feeling when Jenna told me she was going to Bucknell. She was so good, so I knew that Bucknell was going to have a great goalie, and it was going to be great to already have a friend on the team.”
Like many kids, Brooke started playing soccer at a young age, although she admits she was “terrible” at first. The father of one of her best friends was her coach, and Brooke says he really helped her learn and understand the game. Having natural blazing speed didn’t hurt.
“I was always fast, but when I was little I would just literally jump over the ball. But I had a really good coach, and I just kept improving.”
Brooke was Wolcott High School’s Rookie of the Year after starting as a freshman, and she would later earn two all-league citations. Couple that with some standout play on a strong club team, and Brooke started to get college interest around her sophomore year. Right away, she felt like the Patriot League would be the best fit, and it just so happened that Bucknell was coming off back-to-back championship seasons while Brooke was learning more about the league.
“I just felt like the Patriot League was going to be a great spot for me. Academics are very important to me, and the ability to go to a great academic school and also play Division I soccer seemed like the perfect opportunity. Being from Connecticut, I knew of Boston University and a few others, but I didn’t know much about Bucknell. When I was researching the schools in the league, I saw that Bucknell had just won a championship, and I remember watching them win it again in 2017. I ended up coming to Bucknell’s summer camp and just knew that this is where I wanted to go.”
Unfortunately, Brooke’s entry into college life was massively disrupted by the pandemic. Normally first-year players have a chance to bond with their new teammates throughout preseason training camp in August, but there were no team activities with athletics suspended in the fall semester.
“Other than the other freshmen, I really didn’t even have a chance to get to know my teammates very well at all. We were just in this holding pattern. We got to play some in the spring, but I actually tested positive for COVID and had to miss three of the five games. It was really kind of a wasted year. I was so excited coming back as a sophomore because it was my first August training. It was almost like we were freshmen again. The coaches had me playing forward during that spring season, and now I was back on defense, so everything started falling into place.”
The excitement over her first start against West Virginia was symbolic of Brooke’s love for the biggest games on the schedule. The Bison played the 17th-ranked Mountaineers again in 2022, this time in Morgantown, and the 0-0 draw was Bucknell’s first-ever point against a ranked team. The Bison played two very competitive games against Rutgers and Ohio State in the NCAA Tournament, the latter a 1-0 game decided on a Buckeyes’ goal in the 107th minute, and just last week Bucknell fell 1-0 at No. 20 Georgetown on a goal in the 86th minute.
“I love playing those big schools. I think it brings out the best in us, especially in our defensive group. We know that we are going to be under pressure the whole game, but it’s a great test to go up against the best players in the country. The game at Ohio State was just amazing. The whole NCAA Tournament experience is incredible, and we are very motivated to go back there this year.”
Playing in big games on big stages represents half of the scholar-athlete experience that drew Brooke to Bucknell. The other is the academic side, and Brooke has excelled there as well. As a business analytics major within the Freeman College of Management, she earned a perfect 4.0 grade-point average last semester and carries a stellar 3.85 GPA into her senior year. Brooke was named to the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team last fall, and she is a member of the Mortar Board and Omega Rho Honor Societies.
Business analytics is a relatively new major at Bucknell – Brooke will be part of the second graduating class of majors – but it is an up-and-coming field as the business world becomes more data-driven. Brooke was a data and tech consulting intern with PricewaterhouseCoopers last summer, and she has already been hired back after graduation. She is also a Teaching Assistant for Bucknell’s renowned MG101 course, where students create their own small businesses from the ground up.
While she is studying how to build businesses organizationally, she also has experience literally building them from the ground up. Brooke’s father, John, is vice president of Scope Construction Company in Connecticut, and Brooke started working for the company as a laborer while at home during COVID, trading in her soccer boots for a pair of work boots.
Back on campus, Brooke has been heavily involved in the Bucknell Athletics Leadership Institute, a robust development program that she says has served her very well in her role as team captain this season. She is also the team representative for the Bison Cares community service program, and she recently joined two other Bison student-athletes – softball’s Zoie Smith and track & field’s Olivia Boyce – as co-founders and ambassadors for Bucknell’s chapter of Morgan’s Message, an organization that advocates for student-athlete mental health. They host meetings on campus with fellow student-athletes and join calls with other ambassadors around the country to talk about this important issue.
“There has always been a stigma around mental health issues, but it’s something that has touched all of us in one way or another. We are just trying to open up a dialog in a safe space and provide a support system for those who might be struggling with their mental health.”
Even with a rigorous major and her important off-the-field work, Brooke is dialed in on helping the Bison win a third straight Patriot League championship and fifth in the last eight years. After Thursday’s 1-1 draw with Villanova, Bucknell has three matches remaining before the start of Patriot League play at Colgate on Sept. 16.
If history repeats, Brooke and her back linemates will be at their best when it matters most in the month of November.
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