Soccer sisters to square off

Brenna and Blair Boies are sisters who do a lot together.

Whether it be hanging out, helping each other out, or kicking the ball around on the soccer field, the sisters are close. Both are former soccer standouts at Edison High who are now playing college ball. Both play outside midfield and even though they are playing at separate schools, they remain in the same state. They even wear the same jersey number: seven.

For one of the two, that number will prove lucky come Saturday.

For all that the two have gone through together, one thing they haven’t done to date is faced off against each other. At 4 p.m. Saturday, that will change when Brenna’s Northern Arizona University team faces Blair’s Embry Aeronautical University in a nonleague soccer scrimmage, the first match of the season for both schools.

The first-time meeting that pits the siblings against each other is so big, Blair Boies said, that “our whole family will be there.”

“It’s going to be exciting,” Blair Boies said, adding that she and her sister have never played on the same team, let alone against each other. “Off the field we practice together but Saturday will be a first.”

Blair Boies, who turns 18 on Aug. 25, moved onto campus last week at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz. The small National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) school, rated No. 1 nationally in aviation and aerospace college education, fields just four sports teams (men’s and women’s soccer, volleyball and wrestling). She said she’s not sure if she’ll start Saturday’s game.

Blair Boies, who said she will major in aeronautical science with a minor in aviation business administration and has designs on becoming a pilot, was the Sunset League defensive most valuable player for the Edison varsity field hockey team last year. She was awarded several scholarship during her senior year at Edison, including a $10,000 Frank M. Doyle Scholarship from a foundation that awards grants to, among several groups, graduates in the Huntington Beach Unified High School District, and a soccer scholarship to Embry Riddle. Blair Boies, who received approximately $25,000 in scholarships, also played club soccer for coach Kim Engesser with the North Huntington Beach Futbol Club.

April Boies, mother of the siblings, said that Blair has “almost always” worn the same jersey number as her older sister, all the way from her AYSO and club soccer days, through high school and now in college.

Brenna Boies, 21, is a 2007 graduate of Edison and in the school’s soccer hall of fame. She is a two-time all-Big Sky Conference player at Northern Arizona, an NCAA Division I school that is going after its third-straight conference championship this fall. Among her teammates is her former Edison teammate, Corie McGuire, and goalie Tori Rocke from Los Alamitos High.

An all-conference Honorable Mention player her freshman year, Brenna Boies is the current conference assist leader and is looking to break NAU school records for single-season and career assists during her senior year. The Lumberjacks will make a trip to Southern California for nonconference games against USC and Cal State Fullerton the Sept. 10 to 11 weekend.

“We usually do play Embry in preseason but this year, it’s special,” said Brenna Boies, who is majoring in interior design and art history. “Blair and I are very close and I stayed home a little longer this month, just so we could hang out and work out together. We had a lot of fun.

“Playing against her, though, will give me a whole new perspective. But I told my teammates that they can’t take any cheap shots against her.”

Brenna and Blair Boies reported to their respective coaches Aug. 5 to begin training.

Saturday’s match will take place on the Embry Riddle campus.