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All Three Vargas Sisters Have Competed At D-I Level
Growing up in a family that loved playing sports, perhaps it was inevitable that the Vargas sisters would continue their careers beyond high school.
But having all three sisters compete at the Division I level is truly remarkable.
Maria, Liliana and Sofia Vargas all graduated from Rockbridge County High School following well-decorated careers in multiple sports. Maria (Virginia Military Institute) and Liliana (Mount St. Mary’s University) have since completed their tenures in college soccer, while Sofia is entering her sophomore season as a golfer at The Citadel.
The sisters’ early interest in athletics wasn’t accidental. Their grandfather had a professional soccer career in Colombia in the 1950s, and their father, Albert, played soccer for Wheeling Jesuit College (now Wheeling University) in Wheeling, W.Va.
Albert passed his passion for sports down to his kids, with Maria and Liliana both taking up soccer at a young age. And beyond organized youth competitions, there were backyard games involving the entire family – including, eventually, younger brothers Nic and Joe, who are both now students at RCHS. Those family events were fun – but also highly competitive.
“Sports were always something that we did,” Sofia said. “Having the older sisters, I wanted to be better than them. … We wanted the younger brothers to look up to us.”
As the eldest sibling, Maria led the way. Following successful stints with youth teams like Lexington Soccer Club and Rockbridge United, she put together the greatest offensive numbers in RC girls soccer history, shattering the program’s scoring records by amassing 103 goals and 34 assists for 240 total points. In addition to multiple all-region and all-state honors, Maria was named the Conference 31 player of the year in 2017.
That individual success was matched by the team’s results. The 2016 RC squad secured the school’s firstever postseason victory – a 5-0 win over Magna Vista in the conference quarterfinals – followed by the program’s first-ever winning record in 2017. The Wildcats again finished above .500 in 2018, advancing to the regional playoffs for the first time.
“That was one of the first places I was on a team that just felt like a good team,” Maria said. “I played with a lot of really good players. I was only good because those people around me believed in me enough to pass me the ball and kind of let me do my thing.”
Liliana joined the varsity squad as a freshman in 2017. While Maria was leading the attack, the second-eldest Vargas quickly made her mark patrolling the back line, and she ended up earning all-conference and allregion accolades on defense. Any lingering sibling rivalries were set aside in pursuit of the team’s goals.
“At first, we didn’t know what was going to happen – if we were going to fight or not get along,” Liliana said. “None of that happened. It brought us together; it made us both realize how much we love this sport and love to play with each other.”
Ray Ellington, who coached the Wildcats from 2009-2018, had effusive praise for the Vargas sisters. And while – like Maria – he acknowledged that there were other key contributors for RC during that time, Ellington understands how special the two siblings are.
“Aside from [Maria] being the most dangerous attacking player on the team and the most soccer-savvy, she was the leader. Everyone paid attention to her work ethic and her attitude and tried to live up to it,” he said. “Liliana was so important defensively, often drawing the assignment of marking the other team’s best player, but she was also exceptionally capable at getting us into the attack.”
College coaches were also taking notice, and Maria ultimately chose to stay close to home. Beyond growing up in Lexington, there was a direct family connection to VMI: the Vargases’ mother, Stacey, has been on the faculty for years; she currently serves as the head of the physics and astronomy department.
Maria had a productive career for the Keydets, tallying five goals and six assists across 67 matches. As a senior in 2021, she started 18 of 20 games and ranked among the Southern Conference leaders with five assists.
And she certainly didn’t take the experience for granted. “Every game was like a real home game, not just a regular home game,” Maria said. “I’m very thankful that I was able to play at VMI, and that I was able to play in my hometown.”
Two years after Maria began her time with the Keydets – and 200 miles up the road – Liliana followed her sister into the college ranks by committing to Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md.
First came the hurdles of the COVID-19 pandemic. Liliana’s senior season at RC was canceled, and her freshman college campaign featured an abbreviated schedule in the spring of 2021. But she quickly found her home on and off the field with the Mountaineers.
A Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference All-Academic Team honoree, Liliana made 37 career appearances as a defender for The Mount. She was part of more program history as a senior last fall, helping her team advance in the conference tournament for the first time ever with a penalty shootout victory over Niagara in the MAAC quarterfinals. One of Liliana’s three career starts then came in the conference semifinals, when the Mountaineers fell to No. 2 seed Fairfield.
“It was honestly a perfect fit for me,” Liliana said. “I loved every minute of it… There’s nothing I would change about The Mount.”
While soccer was the chosen sport for Maria and Liliana, it wasn’t the only one they competed in. Liliana was a state qualifier in swimming for the Wildcats, and both older sisters spent time with the basketball program at RC.
Yet Sofia’s decision to veer away from the pitch and onto the golf course still came almost completely out of the blue. She credits a family trip to Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg in the summer of 2019, prior to her freshman year of high school, with planting the seed.
Sofia, who had never even picked up a golf club, decided to join the RC golf team that fall. Her dedication quickly made up for any lack of experience, and as a freshman she qualified for the girls’ state tournament – an open event involving athletes from all six classifications – without ever having played a complete 18hole round.
“That kind of was where it all started,” Sofia said. “I realized that competing with the best girls in the state of Virginia, that’s when I decided that I wanted to become a real golfer.”
Sofia quickly built an impressive resume. Squaring off primarily against male athletes, she twice finished third in the Region 3C tournament, and she came in 32nd at the coed Class 3 state tournament as a senior in 2022.
“To see her jump from never playing to what she did in such a quick amount of years” was impressive, RC golf coach David Miller said. “She was so much fun to coach because she just did everything you asked her to do.”
Sofia carried her love for the links to the college level, and she’s embarking on her sophomore year in Charleston, S.C. this fall. After surviving the “mental stress and exhaustion” of her “knob” year – The Citadel’s equivalent of VMI’s rat line – she’s looking forward to balancing academics and athletics and helping the Bulldogs compete in the Southern Conference.
The potential for another sibling rivalry flareup would seem magnified between a VMI grad and a current Citadel cadet. But Maria and Sofia keep the ribbing to a good-natured level, and the eldest Vargas’s pride in both of her sisters seems to outshine everything.
“Not a lot of people play sports in college, let alone play Division I sports in college,” Maria said. “I would like to think that maybe they [Liliana and Sofia] thought they could do it because I was able to do it. … The fact that both of them were able to, to me, it’s one of the things that I’m most proud of.”
The family has plenty to boast about outside of sports, too. After graduating from VMI, Maria commissioned into the U.S. Navy, where she serves in the engineering corps, commonly known as the Seabees. Based at Port Hueneme near Ventura, Calif., she has already deployed to Okinawa, Japan and Chinhae, South Korea.
Liliana graduated from Mount St. Mary’s in the spring with a double major in data science and mathematics, and she expects to go into the field of data analytics – and possibly on to graduate school. Down in Charleston, Sofia is majoring in computer science and has expressed an interest in joining the U.S. Air Force to work in cyber operations.
So what’s next for the Vargases? Nic, a senior, has already experienced high school success, teaming up with Nic Faulds to win a Valley District doubles title in tennis this past spring, while Joe – who’s starting his freshman year at RC – has followed Sofia onto the golf team. When all is said and done, the family might well produce more than three college athletes.
Either way, the Vargas siblings have already had an outsized impact on sports in Lexington and Rockbridge County. And to think that it all started with those backyard family games.
“It’s just been easy growing up with five of us all playing sports,” Liliana said. “You have someone who’s willing to play with you at something.”
