What would bring someone from Brampton, Ontario, Canada to Iowa City?

For Iowa soccer player Alyscha Mottershead, the answer was clear when she made her first visit.

“All of the people are great,” she said. “They’re really homey, and they really take you in. I visited a bunch of places, and then when I came here, it had that kind of small-town feel with almost a big-town feel at the same time.”

The freshman midfielder brings more experience than her class status suggests. She was a member of Canada’s Under-17 National Team that participated in the 2008 FIFA World Cup in New Zealand — an experience of a lifetime.

“When we got there, we realized the actual experience it was,” she said. “It seemed unreal. You can’t really imagine it until you’re there how real it is. It was pretty cool.”

Brampton is located around 40 minutes east of Toronto, making the trip to Iowa City around 12 hours. Soccer is growing in popularity in Canada, but Mottershead was originally in the Olympic gymnastics program from age 3 to 7.

When that didn’t work out, she gave soccer a shot.

“I had a coach from Russia. She was pretty intense,” she said. “She made me cry, so I decided to quit. My dad was a soccer player, so he introduced me to it, and from there, I loved it.”

Another thing that drew her to Iowa was the chance to be the first international player in the program’s 13-year history.

“We were able to watch Alyscha with both her national team and her national training center,” Hawkeye head coach Ron Rainey said. “She stood out as someone who could help our program and is a solid person and student as well. “… She will continue to get better and help the program grow over next few years.”

Mottershead also took visits to other Big Ten schools, including Ohio State and Penn State, but there, she didn’t get the same vibe that she got from Iowa.

“I really liked the coaches and the players. The whole chemistry and everything seemed to be working,” she said. “I wanted to belong to something that was going to be a growing program, and not just another name that gets lost at any other big program. I thought Iowa had something to prove, and I really wanted to be a part of that.”

As a full-time starter, Mottershead has tallied three goals and three assists, helping the Hawkeyes set a record for the best start in school history at 7-2 overall.

“The whole 7-2 as a group has been the best experience just because I knew coming here it was going to be a growing program,” she said. “But to see it grow so quickly is definitely a really big thing for me, and I really enjoyed that.”

Her Iowa teammates have helped Mottershead, who is really close with her family and especially her younger sister, make a smooth transition to being away from home. Senior Alex Seydel went through a similar scenario, coming to Iowa City from San Diego, Calif.

“I think Alyscha’s fitting in real well,” Seydel said. “It definitely takes a certain type of mature person to come here that far from home and do well right off the bat. Off the field, on the field, she’s meshed with the team real well.”