By Ryan Ernst
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Rana Hoffbauer is your typical soccer mom. She drives to and from practice. She encourages her children's interest in the sport. She is the leading goal-scorer on the seventh-ranked junior-college team in the nation.

OK, maybe the 28-year-old mother of two isn't your typical college soccer player. But Cincinnati State is hardly a typical college soccer team.

Nobody knows this better than Wil Cagle, the program's founder and head coach.

Cagle sets up movable, unsteady goals at Kemper Meadows Soccer Complex in Forest Park, where the team practices. The parking lot is full of cars, because the women have to drive there from all parts of the city. Cagle's goalkeeper has to leave 45 minutes into practice.

"Class," he said, shortly before the start of the 4p.m. session. "Two other girls have to leave at 5:45 for a 6:30 class. Plus we have girls who work."

And this is Wednesday, the day Cagle says he usually "has most of the girls in." Not this Wednesday, however. His cell phone rings and he recognizes the number.

"What's up? Is she all right? All right, just get here as fast as you can," he said before hanging up. "Two girls just passed another on the side of the road with a flat."

Welcome to junior-college women's soccer, where class schedules dictate practice time - not vice versa. Where work shifts take precedence over working out.

"You do what you got to do," sophomore midfielder Amanda Roberts said.

For Hoffbauer, a freshman, that means driving to and from Indianapolis, where she lives with her husband, 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. The accounting major is taking 14 credit hours of class between the three-hour round trips.

When does she sleep?

"I don't," Hoffbauer said, laughing. "It's tough, but I love soccer so much. I really wanted to play competitively again and I figured if it was within driving distance, I'd do it."

For players like Hoffbauer and Roberts, who works full time despite a full slate of classes, Cagle's practice schedule is slightly different from that of most college programs.

"Monday is always a day off. Then we try to work in another day every two weeks that they can bank on having off, because we have girls who live on their own and have other responsibilities," Cagle said. "They need jobs to pay the bills, and they're trying hard to put it all together.

"We try to be flexible with that because we have to, more so than UC or Xavier would have to be. But again, that's where we're at."

Where the Surge have been most of the season is in the top 10 in the nation. They are 12-2 entering their first-ever district tournament, the winner of which gets a bid to the eight-team national tournament in St.Louis. They outscored opponents 43-10 in the regular season.

The team is a far cry from the program's roots, a 1999 club team established after Cagle sent a sign-up sheet around the school.

"What we got, what we still get to a lesser degree, was a wide range of people and playing abilities," Cagle said. "We didn't do a lot of traveling, but the girls had fun and we had some decent success. So the next season we went varsity."

And with the move to varsity came an increased emphasis on recruiting.

"We've slowly progressed into not just getting girls who played in high school, but getting girls who were one of the top players on their team," Cagle said. "Our first year we didn't have any girls move on to play at a four-year institution. This year we're looking at five moving on to a four-year institution."

Although a third of the team's 15-player, home-grown roster might be moving on to greener pastures after this season, the Surge still have some unfinished business.

The District XII Tournament takes place Friday and Saturday at Kolping Park. A national title might be far from a typical ending. But then again, what does being typical have to do with college soccer?

E-mail rernst@enquirer.com