Mato Mikic has been around the Rossi twins long enough to know how to tell them apart.
He just has to watch their soccer instincts kick into action to spot the difference.
"Carissa is the more physical one," said Mikic, co-coach of Prince George FC, the city's travelling women's select team. "She plays centre defender or fullback, and she doesn't say much, but when she says something she means it. She's a very dependable defender."
"Corey plays the [midfield] and she makes the nice passes and she sees the field well and directs where the play is going to go. When she gets in that situation around the 18- or 20-yard box she's more confident to take a shot."
Perhaps an easier way to separate the twins, for those who don't know them, is the realization that Carissa is the one who's favouring one leg, while Corey is healthy. Corey is ready to showcase her talents on Prince George FC, a select traveling team from the Prince George Women's Soccer Association, but Carissa will have to wait. She developed tendinitis in her ankle and is scheduled for an MRI exam June 30.
"I played most of the season, even though it was sore, and I was just going to get through the spring and see what happened after rehab and rest and I ended up stopping training so I could have more rest time," Carissa said. "I finished all the games we had in our off-season. We had more friendly games and seven [per side] tournaments and spring went really well this year. Hopefully sometime soon I'll be able to get back at it with PGFC."
PGFC will be in Kamloops on the August long weekend to try to defend its competitive division tournament title and both Rossi twins hope to be playing by then.
Carissa played 11 games last year for the University of Central Arkansas Sugar Bears and was a starter in nine of them. As a defensive specialist she was held to one assist. The team compiled a 6-8-4 overall record in the fall 2010 season and just missed the Southland Conference playoffs.
Playing in her third NCAA Division 1 season, Corey picked up a goal and an assist playing six games at midfield for the Sugar Bears. Beating heavily-favoured Tulsa State was one of the highlights of the season.
"We had a really new team with about 15 freshmen and our team is really building, so it's nice to see our team is having good results now," said Corey. "We've made a lot of friends down there and our team is like our family, it's like our other home."
Competing in the NCAA Southland Conference has made both Rossi girls more aggressive in their play and they've developed a degree of mental toughness and knowledge of the game they likely wouldn't have learned had the stuck strictly to recreational soccer in Prince George.
Corey and Carissa, 21, are also part of Subway FC in the Prince George Women's Soccer Association. Playing for PGFC with their dad Frank as co-coach is a bonus for the Rossi twins. Most of their Arkansas teammates don't get to play summer soccer.
"I can just go back all ready for pre-season but a lot of them have to do it on their own because they don't have the luxury of playing for another team," said Corey. "They don't have many women's leagues down there and they usually don't play during the summer when it's so hot."
In early August they will return to the Central Arkansas campus in Conway to begin three-a-day workouts -- in sauna-like conditions.
"It's like a 100 degrees and all you do is play soccer and sleep," said Carissa, a business administration major. "We'll head right there from the tournament in Kamloops. It's easy to focus on school being so far away from home. It's nice being down there, we get to see a lot of the States."
Carissa has 1 1/2 years left of college eligibility, while Corey has just one year left. They were both recruited at the same time, along with Jessica Brand, who also plays for the Sugar Bears but missed the fall season in 2010 recovering from a knee injury. The same injury, suffered while playing with the Prince George Kodiaks under-18 team, kept Brand out of action in the fall 2008 season.
Carissa did not start at Central Arkansas until the winter semester in January 2009 due to an administrative mix-up with her high school transcripts. When she finally got there, she was constantly being mistaken for her identical twin.
"A lot of people were really confused," said Corey, who studies health sciences. "There was suddenly another one there and they had no idea at all. That was kind of awkward sometimes when people came to talk to me about a class and they were talking to the wrong person."
