Israeli forward taking her soccer talents to the US to play for Division I powerhouse
By JERUSALEM POST SPORTS STAFFShira Elinav has spent several years playing for the blue-and-white National Teams and the top women’s leagues in Israel and is currently a member of Ramat Hasharon, which she helped to the league championship this past season. (photo credit: ODED KARNI)
Shira Elinav, Israel’s senior women’s soccer forward, announced this week that she will be joining the Jayhawks at Kansas University next year. Elinav, 20, started out at age 12 at on the Athena Junior team and at age 14 joined the Academy of Excellence at the Wingate Institute. She has participated in all of Israel’s teams, including the U17, U19 teams and the senior team.“The Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sports congratulates Shira Elinav, a graduate of the Wingate Academy of Sport Excellence, on joining the Kansas University soccer team, which participates in the most significant tournaments each year,” read a Wingate statement. “We would love to continue to see Shira contribute to the Israeli National Team in the future, alongside her playing at Kansas University, where she can experiment with active play at the highest levels. We hope and believe that this impressive starting point will greatly contribute to advancing her personal career and wish her great success down the road as well.”“When we got the initial video on Shira, it looked really good, enough so that I flew over to Tel Aviv to see her play live. That just confirmed what we saw on the video,” said KU head coach Mark Francis. “She is very quick and because of that she is a threat to stretch the opponent’s back line and has a great 1-on-1 mentality.Shira has the ability to finish in different types of scoring scenarios, but also is aware enough to find teammates that might be in better goal scoring positions,” added Francis. “She also has a great mentality to win the ball back immediately after her team loses possession, she has a tremendous work rate. I anticipate her helping us right away on the forward line this fall.”
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