Sibling Competition Propelled Alison Sill to Soccer Stardom

Growing up with two athletic, competitive, older brothers, Alison Sill had two choices: she could ignore sports and her brothers altogether or dig in and compete with them.  For Ali (as she prefers to be called) it was an easy choice.

“I looked up to my brothers,” she said.  “I wanted to be just like them.  I wanted to be better than them.” 

Using her brothers as a driving force, Sill competed in just about “every sport you could name.” She started playing youth soccer when she was five years old; she played baseball in Castro Valley Little League until she was 12; she swam for the Chabot Swim Club; she played softball for the Synergy travel team; she even played volleyball one year in middle school.

By the time Sill reached Castro Valley High – where she lettered in soccer, swimming, and track – she realized soccer was the sport that would take her farthest. She led the Hayward Area Athletic League in scoring in all four seasons (2001-2004), was a three-time first-team All-HAAL selection and two-time Most Valuable Player. 

Recruited by St. Mary’s, Cal Poly and Fresno State, Sill accepted an athletic scholarship at Fresno where she continued to excel.  She was second-team All-Western Athletic Conference her freshman season (2005) and first-team All-WAC all three years after that. A center midfielder, Ali still holds the Bulldogs’ career assists record with 23 and is 10th in career scoring with 49 points (13 goals, 23 assists). 

For her outstanding soccer career, Sill has been elected to the Castro Valley Sports Hall of Fame. 

As remarkable as her individual accomplishments are, perhaps the most striking statistics about Sill’s career are the won-loss records of the teams she played on. Castro Valley High won the HAAL soccer championship every year she was there.  “We rarely lost,” she conceded. 

At Fresno State, Sill celebrated WAC titles with her teammates in three of her four years and the one year they missed (2006) the Bulldogs were 13-5-3.  During Sill’s career, Fresno was 47-31-8 overall and 20-4-4 in conference play. By contrast, the Bulldogs were 5-9-4 the year before Sill arrived and 6-13 the year after she left. 

That winning spirit can be traced back to the front yard of her Castro Valley home where she played all kinds of sports with her two brothers, Ryan and Trevor.

“I was their test dummy,” she chuckled.  “When we were younger I was their target.  I’d stand in the batter’s box when they were pitching.  When they were throwing a football I’d be the target.  I learned to move out of the way.”

Ali, who now lives in Walnut Creek, still finds ways to keep those competitive juices flowing.  She plays Sundays in a “just for fun” coed soccer league in Pleasanton and it’s a good bet her team wins more than it loses. She runs, snowboards, wake boards, mountain bikes and hasn’t ruled out competing in another Ironman event, something she did back in 2013. 

Ironman competition consists of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run.  That’s a big challenge even for someone as active as Ali Sill, who is 5-foot-3 “on a good day.”  She does work out a lot, lifting weights and running, but preparing for a triathlon would take her workouts to another level.

“You’d have to do half-day workouts for nine months or so,” Sill said.  “It’s something I’ve definitely given some thought to, though.” 

In the meantime, Ali is comfortable with her current sports activities, as well as coaching her five-year-old daughter, Collins, who’s already playing baseball and basketball.  “She’s a great little athlete,” Ali boasted. “Her favorite is baseball.”

But then Collins hasn’t started playing soccer yet.

This is the seventh in a series of 16 articles profiling the 2024 inductees into the Castro Valley Sports Hall of Fame.  The Hall of Fame ceremonies and banquet will be held Sunday, April 21, at Redwood Canyon Golf Course.  For tickets, go to castrovalleysportsfoundation.org and click on “Events, Hall of Fame Banquet.”