By Landon Negri
WSL Special Correspondent

For Coronado head coach Alex Cade, measuring the value of standout senior Kodie Englehart cannot be done by perusing a stat sheet or leader board.

“There’s a lot of guys out there who are good players and put up lots of points,” Cade said. “Everyone outside of the game sees the point totals, but there are also points that no one wants to get.

“If we need a goal, and it’s the last five seconds of the game, in a critical situation, Kodie is the guy who steps up and makes that goal.”

It’s that toughness that helped lift Englehart to U.S. High School All-American status while enjoying a year in which pretty much everything went right for the middie. He enters the 2010 season ranked No. 5 among seniors in the Western United States, according to the WSL Elite 25 selection committee.

Englehart capped his junior year last May by scoring twice in the title game to help the Islanders finish 21-2, win 15 consecutive games and capture their first-ever CIF-San Diego Section championship with a 9-4 win over La Costa Canyon. In November, he signed an NCAA Division I national letter of intent to play at the University of Vermont.

About that same time, Englehart was quarterbacking the Islanders football team to the San Diego Section playoffs, where it advanced to the quarterfinals before falling to eventual Division IV champion Mission Bay.

Not bad for one calendar year.

“It has been great because I can just relax now and focus on the lacrosse season coming up,” Englehart said.

That’s not to say there aren’t challenges, or aspects of his game to refine as the new season sets to dawn.

His team, for example, is returning six starters but lost some firepower to graduation last year. The Islanders finished 2009 ranked No. 2 in the WSL’s Top 25 and are likely to still be among the elite in the section. Englehart expects them in the mix ---- along with La Costa Canyon and Rancho Bernardo ---- for another section crown.

“We need to work on our team because we lost a bunch of people last season,” he said. “So we need to work on moving the ball quick, just like we did last year.”

For him, there’s an opportunity to work on the future. That began to kick into gear in the fall, where he managed a run-based offense at Coronado while throwing for 1,004 yards. While the leadership comes easy to him and translates from football to lacrosse, so does the vision.

“(Football) helps, because I see the whole field,” Englehart said. “I’m seeing what’s going on and I can tell what play to run, so it’s pretty similar.”

Englehart hopes to play in the next summer’s Under Armour All-American Game on the East Coast. He’ll then need to add some bulk to his lanky 6-foot-1 frame to play at Vermont, where he’ll join former teammate and sophomore attackman Geoff Worley.

The Catamounts are led by coach Ryan Curtis, a former high school teammate of Cade at the renowned lacrosse factory, so to speak, at the Landon School in Bethesda, Md.

“It’s fairly typical for a (high school) All-American to go to college and not see the field,” Cade said. “I don’t see that happening with Kodie. I expect him to have a fairly significant impact at Vermont.”

Said Englehart: “I am going to have to get conditioned. I am going to have to run a lot.”

Hard work won’t be anything new.

“He’s one of the toughest players I’ve ever coached,” Cade said. “He never shies away from a hit.”