Kalani Soccer Star Tani Costa Commits To Penn State

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Of Derek Costa’s many images of his daughter Tani’s exploits on the soccer field, the one that endures is her very first game at the age of 4-and-a-half. By intermission, Tani Costa had already scored 10 goals and was pulled from the game to avoid running up the score.

“She’d actually run down her own throw-ins (in-bounds passes),” said Costa of his daughter.“I looked at my wife, and we both knew then that she was gifted. She’s stood out at every level since.”

The legend continues to grow. A senior-to-be at Kalani in the fall, Tani led the entire state - boys and girls - in scoring last season, tallying 23 times for the Falcons, who won the OIA Red East’s regular season for the second year in a row. Her numbers are all the more impressive given that she missed four games while on the Mainland practicing with the United States Soccer Federation Under-17 Women’s National Team. Her efforts were recognized further recently by Gatorade, which named her the Hawaii Girls Soccer Player of the Year. She joins former volleyball standout Tamari Miyashiro (Washington) as the only other athlete from Kalani to earn the honor. And you know you’re one of the top soccer recruits in the country when Penn State’s Joe Paterno takes time away from practice to introduce you to his football team - as he did last October when Tani visited the school.

“He’s a very nice man,” she said of Paterno, the Penn State football coach for 42 years.

Not unlike on the football field where they are fierce rivals, Penn State and Ohio State were locked in an epic recruiting battle to land Tani on their soccer team. All told, she had 23 scholarship offers to weigh from different schools before she finally committed to Penn State.

“Telling Ohio State ‘no’ was like breaking up with a boyfriend,” mused Tani, who was the OIA East’s Player of the Year as a sophomore. “It was stressful before I had committed. I had to do a lot of research on each school. Now I feel like I can focus on what I need to focus on.”

Although a former football player himself, her father stopped short of saying Tani’s meeting with the legendary Paterno “sealed the deal” for the Nittany Lions. (In fact, the Costa family was provided front-row tickets to see the Buckeyes play Wisconsin in football on their visit to Columbus.)

“What really made up our minds was how well they support their athletes,” said Derek Costa, who played on Kaiser’s prep bowl championship team in 1979. “They don’t let their athletes slip through the cracks there. She’ll be far away, and we want to know she’ll be taken care of. She’d like to go into orthopedic medicine, and Penn State is a great fit for everything. Happy Valley is such a warm community. The people are great.”

The soccer publication Top Drawer rates Costa No. 8 among the top 100 girls soccer players in the country in her age group. Since taking up the sport, she’s always been a step ahead of the competition.

“Soccer is my passion,” she said. “I tried track my freshman and sophomore years, but it interfered too much with soccer.”

Quiet and reserved off of the field, Tani’s ultra-competitive nature comes through in a big way on game day. Known as a clutch player, she proved it last November when competing with the U-17 U.S. National Team in a New Zealand tournament, when she scored a game-tying goal against Germany before assisting on the game-winner only moments later.

“Even in practice, I’ll have fun, but I’m really focused,” she said. “On the field, there are no friends. I’m a lot more laid-back off the field.”

For the present, long distance air travel has become a big part of her life. Since November, she’s been flying to either Florida or New Jersey once a month to practice with the national team. In July, America will play in a tournament in the Caribbean in hopes of qualifying for the World Cup in New Zealand in November.

“I don’t like flying alone, but at the same time, I love it,” she said, “and they pay for everything.”