Hall of Fame
Our third honoree is Erin Menard Spalding, Centre graduating class of 2009. One of the common bonds many of this year’s inductees have is that they are trailblazers, athletes whose presence announced that their teams had arrived. This is certainly the case for Erin Menard. As a freshman soccer player in 2005, Erin made one of the biggest splashes of any first-year student-athlete Centre has ever had, scoring 24 goals – still the second most in a season in program history.
After finishing her collegiate career with 59 goals and 12 assists, Erin made history once more, earning All-Great Lakes Regional First Team honors and becoming Centre’s first ever NSCAA (now United Soccer Coaches) All-American in women’s soccer, paving the way for the likes of Destinie Graves, Tori Dillard, Alana Hughes, Jessie Turner, and numerous others to follow in her footsteps as All-Americans for head Coach Jay Hoffman. Erin also played on the first ever Centre women’s soccer team to play in the NCAA Tournament in her senior year of 2008, and passed on that leadership to the freshman class who started Centre’s current run of nine consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.
After Centre, Erin earned a graduate degree in sports leadership from the University of Kentucky while serving as a graduate assistant for Athletics Marketing. She has spent the past ten years at Doe-Anderson, the largest advertising agency in Louisville, where she has managed the North American business for Maker’s Mark bourbon. Erin’s work in advertising has earned her the Louisville Advertising Federation’s “Hot 10” award, given to the best and brightest advertising professionals under age 32. In addition to all of this, Erin also serves as the coach of her son’s soccer team.
