Less than 10 miles away from Tenney Stadium sits the campus of Arlington High School in Lagrangeville, New York. There, Marist women’s soccer graduate student forward Marissa Foster was one of the school’s best players from 2018-2022, earning multiple All-League selections.
Four years after graduating, she returned to the Hudson Valley to finish her collegiate career.
Originally from nearby Wappingers Falls, New York, Foster grew up in a family of athletes, and soccer was always played in her house. Despite the close location to Marist, though, Foster did not want to stay home when picking where to play at the next level.
“I didn’t want to be too close to home, but I didn’t want to go too far either,” she said.
That led her to a school in another region of New York: University at Buffalo.
“I really liked the coach that I was speaking with,” Foster said. “He was all about soccer, and they were building a good program, and that’s somewhere where I wanted to be. I wanted to compete, we played in the MAC; it was still at a high level.”
In Foster’s freshman season, the Bulls won the conference regular season title and tournament to earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament. A light contributor, Foster appeared in 23 games that season, the most games she played in three seasons at Buffalo.
In 2023, Foster played in 17 games and recorded two points. Before her junior year started, however, she faced the biggest challenge of her career. She had surgery in August 2024 to repair two full tears in her ankle.
“I tore everything you could think about in my ankle,” she said.
Her road to recovery took the entire season. She missed every game, and the injury still affects her to this day.
“I had this surgery in August and started playing again in February. It was a long, lengthy process, mentally challenging, as well as physically challenging at times. I still have trouble with it to this day,” Foster said. “But a big thing that kind of got me through it was keeping my team meetings going, as much as they kept me going, and just seeing things from a different perspective.”
Coming back in 2025, Foster struggled to find the field. She played in only 10 games and did not start any. She did experience the highlight of her career as a Bull that year, though, when she scored three goals in nine minutes against Northern Illinois.
After her third season at Buffalo, Marist head coach Nicole Pacapelli Ciano took notice. The two had met on the recruiting trail before, when Foster was in high school, and Pacapelli Ciano was an assistant at Binghamton.
“We were looking to bring in a couple of grad kids with some experience, and she obviously played at a very high level in a reputable program, being Buffalo,” said Pacapelli Ciano. “So you just kind of reach out and hope for the best from that standpoint.”
Heading into the 2026 season, the Red Foxes lost their two leading scorers, as Olivia Lindsay graduated and Gabby Tirado transferred to Elon. This led Pacapelli Ciano to look for veteran leadership on the attack.
Intrigued by the idea of playing close to home for one season, and with an extra year of eligibility after missing the entire 2024 season, Foster took the opportunity.
“Just knowing that I’m going to be close to home and all of my family can come to my games all the time, as opposed to just sometimes,” Foster said about her decision to transfer to Marist. “[It was] like a homecoming type thing.”
The early part of the season involved a hurdle for Foster and the Red Foxes. Pacapelli Ciano’s daughter was born over the summer, causing her to miss practices and the first five games of the season. As a player who was expected to bring veteran leadership, the team needed Foster and the rest of its veteran players to step up even more.
“Having [Foster] or someone like her, they have more experience than a typical freshman in the college game,” said Pacapelli Ciano. “So I think that’s the benefit of bringing in grad students in general is their experience.”
The team was led by assistant coach Mackenzie Hanna in Pacapelli Ciano’s absence. Though the team went winless in non-conference play, she earned the first win of her career on Oct. 10 against Canisius. In conference play, the Red Foxes flipped the season around. They finished the season 7-4-1 against Metro foes, two more wins than last season’s team without Foster.
Marist’s success in conference play has been shaped by their change in offensive attack. In five non-conference games, they scored just two goals. In 12 conference games, they averaged 1.333 goals per game, compared to 1.167 last season, when they ranked bottom-five in the conference. Even more impressively, the team has begun to apply a dramatic amount of pressure on the opposing goal. They rank third in shots in the Metro with 197.
Foster has been key in this new offensive attack. She is tied with junior forwards Ariana Mullin and Margaret Johnson for the team lead in goals with three. Foster has also been the most accurate of all of Marist’s goal scorers; she leads in shots-on-goal percentage at 61.9%.
“As a forward, you got to score, right? The mindset is to get anywhere that I can to be in a scoring position or to drag it to the defender so that my teammates can be in a scoring position,” said Foster. “You just have to be an option, you just got to get there.”
One of Foster’s best games came in a big win against the No. 2 seed in the conference tournament, Niagara. In a 3-0 win, Foster scored a goal and attempted three shots.
Foster and the Red Fox offense have brought the team to heights unseen in the Pacapelli Ciano era. After failing to make the Metro tournament in her first two years at the helm, Marist has made the conference tournament in each of the last two seasons.
As the team looks forward, Foster’s speed and precision will be necessary to go on a playoff run. The Red Foxes earned the No. 6 seed and are set to take on Fairfield on Sunday.
Edited by Mike Schiavone and Max Rosen
Graphic by Xavier Angel
Picture by Michael O’Neil
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