The speed has always been indisputable.

After all, Regan Johnson holds the Bradford Area High School record for the fastest time in the 100-meter dash and has earned nine District titles over her track and field career.

But what set the Owls senior apart on the soccer field was much more than just her ability to get up and down the pitch quicker than her opponents, or even her teammates.

Regan Johnson scored 40 goals — the most of any girl in the Big 30 this season — and led the Bradford girls soccer team to its second consecutive District 9 Class AAA title.

For that, Johnson was awarded the Mary Neilon Award as the Big 30 Girls Soccer Player of the Year.

Johnson becomes the first Bradford girls soccer player to win the award since its inception in 2005.

“Her contributions to our team have been spectacular,” Bradford coach Warren Shaw said. “(She’s) a great representative for the school community and program itself. She could have easily gone on to play at the college level herself.”

Instead, Johnson will be continuing her athletic career running track and field at Slippery Rock University next year.

With all the success she had on the soccer field, Johnson admitted that there was some thought to going on and playing at the college level, but that running track at Slippery Rock was the right choice.

“There was a thought, but that’d be a lot to do going into college so I decided to run track,” she said. “I’m going to study communication and integrated marketing.”

Johnson finished her four-year high school career as Bradford’s all-time leading goal scorer with 109 tallies. She was a fixture in Bradford’s starting lineup since her time as a freshman and helped the program to back-to-back PIAA appearances.

“It means a lot to me to win (the award),” Johnson said. “I think I developed a lot as a player since my time playing travel soccer when I was 10. I put in a lot of dedication and hard work and it paid off.”

Most impressive to Johnson’s game, according to her coach, has been her ability to continually improve on her play and to become a more complete player.

“The biggest thing for her especially this year — and I’ve been working with her since she was 8 — was her willingness to come back and win the ball,” Shaw said. “Not just wait for it to be given to her. She worked her way to midfield and to the backline to win the ball back and her game started to take off from there.”

That ability to possess the ball at various points on the soccer field, and not just in the offensive end, allowed Johnson to have a career-high in assists this year (18) as well as to help open up plenty of offense for the rest of her teammates. She had just 12 assists total in her first three years of varsity soccer.

“This year it was more about working with her teammates and that made her a better player,” Shaw noted. “I would say it’s more when Regan does use the skill set that I talked about where she comes back to win the ball, she is unbeatable when she is in that mindframe of being a total player.

“(There were) several games where it wasn’t about scoring, it was about winning.”

Bradford, which finished the year 12-6-1 playing in a competitive District 10 (Erie) league, was second in its region with an impressive 98 goals scored.

The Owls scored more than five goals in nine different games this year, with Johnson leading the offensive surplus.

“I put in a lot of work in the offseason and in travel soccer with lots of conditioning,” she said. “I did a lot of drills in practice and drills with defenders and plays around (the goal) and perform during the game.”

Not surprisingly, Johnson hasn’t put away her soccer jersey for good. She’s currently trying out for the Corporate Cup Soccer Showcase that matches up the top players from Pennsylvania against their counterparts from New York and then she will also play for the Bradford United 19U team this spring.

Outside of athletics, Johnson is on Bradford’s Student Council as well as in the National Honor Society.

“I’ll always say that about my players that no matter what they do on the field, I am more proud of them as a person,” Shaw said. “And that’s the case with Regan.”

And while Shaw knows that Johnson’s goal-scoring production simply cannot be replaced, he’s also going to miss how she rallied her teammates and brought the most out of them on game days.

“Regan is not really a vocal leader, and she never has been,” he asserted. “But when she goes out and wants to win, it’s infectious. Everyone wants to play through her and everyone wants to play harder when she’s playing harder and you can see it on the field.”

Also nominated for the top girls award were Alyssa Spring and Molly McClelland (Allegany-Limestone) as well as Lexi Gibbons (Olean). Johnson was the only Pennsy player to be named to the Big 30 girls team this year with the other 14 coming from the Empire State.