New Iberia Senior High goalie Brandi Decoux knew that she wanted to go to college and knew that she wanted to play soccer.

With only a belief in her abilities and hard work, she plugged away for four years at NISH learning as much as possible about goal keeping and working as hard as possible to show she could play the position.

It all paid off Monday as Decoux signed a soccer scholarship with Louisiana Tech University in Ruston.

Bill Smith / The Daily Iberian Brandi Decoux, second from right, NISH soccer team member, talks with Don Shoopman, Angelia Arcement and Dwayne Hoffpauir during a reception after Decoux signed to play soccer with Louisiana Tech after high school. Advertisement

“It’s nice to have the hard work that I put out over the past few years pay off,” said Decoux. “I knew what I wanted and I knew what I had to do to do it.

“I didn’t play club soccer like others did and I knew that I was going to have to write and show them that I was willing to do whatever it took to be part of the team. And Tech was the school that I wanted to be at.”

Decoux essentially sold herself to Louisiana Tech. She researched the universities that she wanted to attend to find out the criteria needed to study for a degree and play sports.

“At first I was going through all the schools in Louisiana because I wanted to keep my TOPS (Scholarship),” said Decoux. “Tech had what I wanted to major in and it was an awesome school. Then I looked at the soccer program and knew that they were looking for people to build a soccer program on and I wanted to be a part of that.”

To that end she enlisted the help of soccer coach Dwayne Hoffpauir to make a tape of her showing off her soccer skills and sent the tape to Louisiana Tech.

In the end Decoux was accepted by Tech and in the process became the first girls’ soccer player at NISH to sign with a Division I program.

“Personally it’s a good feeling to have a girl work so hard to achieve the goals that she set for herself.” said Hoffpauir. “She had the opportunities to prepare herself with the district that we were in to get ready.

“She is a self-motivating person. She came up to me in her junior year and asked if we could put a video together because she really wanted to go to Tech. She sold her skills to Louisiana Tech.

“Once they saw the tape and knew where her heart was, I know that they are going to get an outstanding player in Brandi.”

In her career at NISH, the three-year starter had 687 saves in 996 attempts and a record of 31 wins and 33 losses with 5 ties.

“I feel that Brandi’s aggressiveness in goal will help her,” said Hoffpauir. “The speed of the game is a lot quicker at Division I. I think that she has a lot of talent that they can harness and groom her into the type of goal keeper that they want.”

Decoux, who plans to study Kinesiolgy at Louisiana Tech, is looking forward to playing at the college level.

“As soon as I made the video and the coach said congratulations you made the team for 2008, that was it for me,” said Decoux. “The program currently plays on the football field but there is funding in place for a state-of-the-art soccer stadium. The campus is nice and pretty and it’s nice place to live.

“They took in two other recruits as goal keepers so with me there will be three fighting for the starting spot. I’m going to do what I can to get that spot.”