From staff reports
The Mainland Regional High School community knows what it’s like to feel heartache. In 2011, just before the start of the football season, four players on the team were killed in a car accident on the Garden State Parkway. Then, two years ago, incoming freshman Aisling Cooke — a budding soccer star — lost her life after being injured in a car accident while traveling to Buena for a soccer tournament. That happened just days before Aisling would have starter her freshman year at Mainland.
But while the Mustangs have known pain and suffering, they also know how to come together and try to rebuild.
Many of the juniors and seniors who are on the boys and girls soccer teams this year were friends with Aisling, who would have started her junior year this fall. They want to keep Aisling’s memory alive, so in her honor they decided to start a preseason friendly match featuring both the boys and girls squads. So the boys and girls divided up players for three separate teams and played a couple of friendly games this past Saturday morning in Linwood in honor of Aisling. The players hope this is something that can happen every year and continue to become more popular — not only for current players, but alumni as well.
“This came about because one of Aisling’s favorite sports was soccer, and we want to remember her as a great soccer player, both on and off the field. We want to do something every year to remember her, so we want to make this a yearly thing so that even when we are Mainland alumni we can come back and do this. We want it to be a tradition that keeps going,” Molly O’Shea, one of the stars of the girls soccer team, said during an interview on 97.3 ESPN FM on Saturday morning. “This means a lot to the whole community, and her family as well. We always like to keep her name out there and make sure everyone remembers her and how great of a person she was, and a soccer player, as well. She was outgoing and all-around one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. She could light up a room. And, of course, she was a very good athlete. She played soccer and lacrosse, ran some track and played some volleyball in middle school. Any kind of sport she got her feet or hands on, she was good at it.”
O’Shea said it hasn’t been easy dealing with the death of her friend, but events such as the one that took place last weekend help ease the pain a little bit, she said.
“It’s been hard throughout the past two years, but every time I see a really nice sunrise or sunset, I know she is right there watching over us. And I’ll remember all the good times we had together instead of the bad memories of this time two years ago,” O’Shea said.
Losing Aisling has been enormously difficult for the Cooke family, and O’Shea said many of the soccer players continue to keep in touch with Aisling’s parents, hoping that interaction will help in some small way.
“We make sure to stop over there often and keep them in touch with our lives. They love to come and watch and support the girls soccer team,” O’Shea said. “It’s really nice for us to continue to keep in touch with her family, because they are a part of our Mainland community.”
For the past two years, athletes from nearly every sport at Mainland have been wearing green bands around their legs or arms in remembrance of Aisling. The bands are green and feature a heart surrounding the number 4, Aisling’s jersey number. A green band with a white No. 4 can be seen at field hockey games, soccer, baseball, basketball, football, even track and field.
“It’s amazing. Mainland is really like one family together. Through any tragedy, we’ll always have each other’s backs, no matter what,” O’Shea said. “We’ll always represent Aisling and do it for her. Every scrimmage or game we play, we make sure it’s for her. We always make sure she is a motivator for this team, whether it’s incoming freshmen all the way up to juniors and seniors. She impacted our whole community. We make sure every extra sprint or every extra rep is for her, because we know in our games we’re going to do our best for her.”