AUBURN, Ala. – Senior goalkeeper Allison Whitworth became the first Auburn soccer player ever to be drafted into a professional soccer league when FC Gold Pride selected her in the eighth round (54th overall) of Friday’s Women’s Professional Soccer Draft in St. Louis, Mo.

“I’m so excited about this opportunity to continue my career in such an awesome arena as WPS,” Whitworth said from the site of the draft. “I need to thank first and foremost my family as well as all of my coaches, teammates and the rest of the Auburn staff who have shaped who I am and given me this opportunity. I’m very excited to head to the Bay Area to represent this family.”

“We are so excited for Allison to be selected in the first WPS Draft,” Auburn Head Coach Karen Hoppa said. “Her selection is a testament to all her hard work and a great way to end her collegiate career.  We look forward to watching her represent Auburn at the professional level.”

Whitworth, from Birmingham, finished her senior season with a school-record 132 saves, giving her an Auburn-best 356 stops in her career. She also posted eight shutouts for the second straight season to give her 22 career shutouts and posted a 1.02 GAA as a senior to earn First Team All-SEC accolades after being tabbed a Second Team All-SEC selection as a junior.

“Allison is a keeper we have been keeping our eye on for quite some time,” FC Gold Pride Head Coach Albertin Montoya said. “She has a lot of potential and we were very excited to have her still available to us in the (eighth) round.”

The FC Gold Pride is based out of California’s Bay Area and will play its home games at Buck Shaw Stadium at Santa Clara University. Montoya, who has been coaching and training professional and youth players and teams in the Bay Area and was a volunteer assistant coach at Stanford this past season, is the head coach he will bring Jay Cooney, the goalkeeping coach at Stanford, along with him to coach FC Gold Pride.

FC Gold Pride chose former U.S Women’s National Team member and World Cup star Brandi Chastain in the seventh round (45th overall), nine picks before selecting Whitworth. Other notable selections by FC Gold Pride were Christina DiMartino from UCLA with the third overall pick and Ameera Abdullah from Florida in the fifth round (31st overall). WPS is the highest level women’s professional soccer league in North America.  Formed in September 2007 as the result of the efforts of the
Women’s Soccer Initiative, Inc., WPS, which will begin play in April, consists of seven teams across the country.

The markets for the 2009 season are San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Jersey/New York, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C.  WPS expects to expand to Atlanta and Philadelphia in 2010 and continues to explore additional potential franchises for 2010 and beyond.

ADDITIONAL QUOTES FROM ALBERTIN MONTOYA CONCERNING THE SELECTION OF ALLISON WHITWORTH
“I was an assistant coach at Stanford this season and when we faced them (on September 5 in Athens, Ga.) she was spectacular, so right then I knew we had to keep an eye on her.

“We brought her in to the combine and once again she impressed and our assistant coach Jay Cooney was again impressed. He believes that she will be a full-time National Team keeper and that’s a lot coming from him. He is currently Nicole Barnhart’s goalkeeper coach and when he said that I thought, ‘OK. We can’t pass her up, let’s go for her.’ Just by him saying that I know that she will be one of the best keepers in the league in the next few years if she keeps going the
way she has.”