CALEDONIA — Team is an important word to Hanna Pettigrew, even if the Caledonia High School senior doesn’t know it.
If you want to know what team means to Pettigrew, ask Allen Greenhaw, who coached Pettigrew starting in 2009 with Columbus United up until last year.
“She has been a pleasure,” Greenhaw said of Pettigrew, who played goalkeeper, forward, and defender on the club soccer team. “She is very coachable. She may not have had the most talent on the field, but she had the desire and the work ethic. I wish we had more players like her.”
Caledonia High soccer coach Louis Alexander also has come to understand what the word team means to Pettigrew, a transfer from Hamilton High. Alexander said Pettigrew came in, worked hard, adjusted to his system, and has helped stabilize the back line at right back.
“She is definitely fast and knows how to work with the other girls,” Alexander said. “It has been an easy transition. The credit goes to her teammates but, most importantly to Hanna.”
Pettigrew will take that team-first attitude to the Mississippi University for Women. On Tuesday, Pettigrew finalized those plans during a signing ceremony at the school in which she had 12 medals from her years of soccer arranged on a table with her jerseys for Caledonia High and Columbus United.
“Everybody works together. You win as a team and you lose as a team,” said Pettigrew, who said she started playing soccer when she was about 5 years old. “You do everything together, and it’s not just for yourself.”
Pettigrew started playing in Caledonia. The medals she had arranged on the table date back to 2009, when she started playing with Columbus United. Greenhaw was her first coach.
Greenhaw said Pettigrew always has been an inquisitive player who wants to know how and why to do things. He said her athleticism and her team-first attitude enabled her to play multiple positions through the years.
“It was always about the team. It wasn’t about me,” Greenhaw said. “She played wherever you asked her to play and never asked why, or never said she didn’t want to play there. It was just, ‘Where do you need me?’ That speaks volumes about her character.”
Greenhaw said those qualities are the epitome of what any coach wants in a play.
“It was always more about her team than she is about herself,” Greenhaw said.
Alexander agrees and feels Pettigrew will do well at The W. He said he is excited to see how she progresses as a college player because she is “always going to work hard and be coachable.”
“I feel like I am more of a supporter,” Pettigrew said she feels more like a “supporter” in her first year in the Caledonia High program. She said she takes the attitude that she will support you if you’re down and that she will remind you to stay humble if things are going well.
Pettigrew said she always has tried to be stay humble, too, and to put the team first. She acknowledges she has had her good and bad days, but she has made it her goal to do whatever she needs to do to help the team.
Pettigrew, whose said her favorite position is defense, said she talked with The women’s soccer coach Gray Massey following Caledonia High’s first match against New Hope. She said she visited the Columbus campus the next day and gave a verbal commitment a few days later. Pettigrew said the location of the school and the chance to play soccer in college played a big role in her realizing her dream.
It remains to be seen if Pettigrew will get a chance to add to her collection of medals as a senior at Caledonia or at The W, but she feels like a soccer career that started on the youth fields in Caledonia has flown by. She said a Frostbite medal Columbus United players received after winning the tournament is one that holds the most memories for her. At The W, Pettigrew will focus on making more memories by putting the team first.
“I hope I have stayed (consistent and humble),” Pettigrew said. “It was harder this year because it was another team and I didn’t know as many of the girls. This year, I feel like I am not really a leader because I haven’t had the experience there for them to respect me.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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