Dade County’s Abbigail Tremmier Joins Chattanooga Football Club Women’s Team

By LYDIA BERGLAR
News Editor

Abbigail Tremmier’s soccer career reached an exciting milestone this spring when Chattanooga Football Club Women’s team added her to the goalkeeper roster for the 2024 season. The CFC Women’s team is part of the Women’s Premier Soccer League (WPSL), the top amateur women’s league in the United States.

Tremmier, a 2024 Dade County High School graduate, and her twin sister, Caroline, earned renown as kickers on the DCHS football team their last three years of high school. Tremmier also played goalie at DCHS and on a CFC Academy team.

Tremmier began playing soccer when she was about five years old, but she also tried basketball, softball, gymnastics, and karate. In middle school, she narrowed her focus to soccer and specifically goalie. Tremmier said that if she had the opportunity to add one more sport to her already lengthy list, it would be lacrosse.

When the CFC women’s team had open tryouts in February, Tremmier was out of town, but the team’s goalkeeper coach came to several of the Academy team’s practices. The coach worked with her and the other goalkeeper, and both were invited to join the women’s team alongside the current goalkeepers.

Because the Academy team made it to regionals (with the potential of going to nationals), the girls are not certain how many of the women’s team practices and games they’ll have time for. Tremmier said she’s gotten to know a few of her new teammates, and several of her Academy teammates are moving up with her. Her coach on the Academy team (Wan Hernandez) is also an assistant coach with the CFC Women’s team, and his wife, Summer, and Summer’s sister are both on the women’s team.

Tremmier said that the difference between each level (DCHS, Academy team, women’s team) is “incomparable” with each step up requiring more skill and practice. While goalkeepers on the Academy team spend more time practicing with the entire team, the women’s team goalkeepers spend more time focused on their specialized skills.

Carrying with it psychological aspects and a required skill set, the position of goalkeeper presents unique challenges. Tremmier said, “Goalkeeper is one of the hardest positions, in my opinion. I’m putting myself out there for my team. One of the biggest challenges is building up confidence. Your confidence can get taken away very quickly if one thing goes wrong, and you have to rebuild it during the game.”

However, there’s nowhere else she’d rather be than in the goal, and she’s grown in her ability to handle the pressure. “I used to not like goalie because of the mental part of it. If you get scored on, everybody looks at you. That used to be really hard, but as I’ve gotten older and better, I don’t feel the pressure as much. I like the challenge.”

Tremmier and Caroline were recruited to the DCHS football team when Coach Jeff Poston saw them kicking a soccer ball, but Tremmier said that the two balls and sports are completely different. “Everybody thinks it’s the same, but it’s totally different.”

She enjoyed being on the football team and said it provided a bit of break from soccer, which she was playing year round. However, being a kicker was also a mental challenge her first year. “Everybody thought we couldn’t do it, but after they warmed up to us doing it, it was really fun,” she explained.

Tremmier’s summer and fall are shaping up to be quite busy as she juggles three weekly practices, regionals, and potentially nationals with the Academy team; five weekly practices plus matches with the women’s team; working at Ace Hardware in Trenton; and beginning college at the University of Chattanooga this fall.

Tremmier is entering UTC’s veterinarian program. She doesn’t plan to play soccer while in college, nor is she set on reaching the National Women’s Soccer League, but she foresees sports in her future. She said, “I’m not playing in college, and it would be nice to have a break, but I might come back to the women’s team later on.” Saying that she would have liked to keep playing basketball, she added, “Maybe I’ll get in a league when I’m older.”

Tremmier is specifically thankful for the years of support from her parents, Jonathan and Gretchen. “They’ve always been at my games, always watching and helping me.”