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Steamboat Springs — It was an electric moment.

The Steamboat Springs High School girls soccer team was playing archrival Battle Mountain in April 2006, with first place in the Western Slope League on the line. The score was 1-1 in the first half when Kelly Labor, one of eight seniors on the team, lofted a corner kick toward her classmate and longtime friend, Ann Barney.

Barney drilled a header into the net.

"Her face just lit up. Her arms went up in the air, and she turned around and looked at me," Labor said Wednesday. "I will always remember her face after that goal."

Those who knew her will remember many things about Ann Barney, 19, who passed away Friday in a car accident near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Her smile. Her compassion for others. Her ability to make friends anytime, anywhere.

"She just had one of the most uplifting personalities you could ever imagine," said Casey Garth, a friend and teammate of Ann's since childhood. "Everything for her was always so positive - she was completely selfless. She always put her friends and family first."

A 2006 graduate of Steamboat Springs High School, Ann was involved in numerous activities as a Sailor. She played basketball, was a 2006 class officer, worked on the yearbook committee, and was a central midfielder for a dominant soccer team that won 50 league games in four years. While Ann also had a passion for skiing, snowboarding, and the outdoors, her family and friends said her greatest love was for the people that filled her life.

"She was certainly, to me, a wonderful girl. She was not perfect. Nobody's perfect. But she certainly lit up our lives," said her father, Patrick Barney. "We were given a special gift with Ann. She had the ability to make people feel good about themselves:I don't know how we were so fortunate to have Ann."

Friendship

Patrick Barney said one of the many visitors his family has had this week was a young man who moved to Steamboat Springs as a sophomore in high school and, like any new student, felt out of place in his new surroundings.

Until Ann came up to him one day and invited him to lunch with her and her friends, starting a lasting friendship.

"He said that Ann was someone that really reached out to him and gave him a place to start making friends," Patrick Barney said. "That's the kind of girl Ann was."

Casey Garth remembered a childhood friendship with Ann that included games such as laser-tag, dress-up parties and mock photo shoots. The smiles didn't go away throughout the years, or even in tough situations like a soccer game in their junior year of high school, when Garth missed the last penalty kick in the shootout of a rare Steamboat loss.

Garth said Ann's light-hearted, upbeat reaction - with a comment like "at least you had a lot of power on the ball" - couldn't help but lift her spirits.

"She was the one person who after that game was able to put a smile on my face and cheer me up," Garth said. "She really knew how to make you look on the bright side of things."

Design

A sophomore at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., Ann Barney was majoring in interior design, an art she planned to study in Italy next year.

Friday, she was a passenger in a car driven by Tyler Pearson, 21, of Kennewick, Wash. An Idaho State Police dispatcher said Pearson lost control of the car on an icy stretch of U.S. Highway 95 just south of Coeur d'Alene. Pearson and passenger Benjamin Lockard, 20, of Kennewick, also were killed when the car collided with an oncoming SUV. Two other people were seriously injured in the accident.

KREM 2 News, a Spokane, Wash., television station, reported that alcohol was not a factor in the accident.

Steamboat resident Buddy King is a friend of the Barney family and father of Tara King, who he said was like "two peas in a pod" with Ann Barney since early childhood. Buddy King said Ann was extraordinarily warm-hearted and outgoing.

"I can picture Ann dancing around the house here," he said. "She was always like a puppy, bouncing around, so full of life."

Love and support

Patrick Barney said Wednesday that the response from the Steamboat community has been overwhelming.

"We are so blessed by this community and the outpouring of love and support that we have had from everyone," Patrick Barney said. "We feel so blessed to live here."

Ann Barney was aware of that blessing. Her high school senior project, titled "Through My Eyes," filled a display case at Bud Werner Memorial Library with photographs, favorite books, drawings, skiing memorabilia, sports equipment, her scrapbook and landscape pictures - all meant to show how Steamboat made her the person she became.

"This beautiful place can shape you," Ann Barney said in April 2006. "It's not just a ski mountain; it's a community."

That community now mourns a tragic loss.

"She appreciated everything and everyone in her life," Kelly Labor said. "I couldn't tell you how many times she told me how lucky she was to grow up in Steamboat, with the community, the family and friends - she mentioned that to me several times in the past 10 years. How lucky she was, and how lucky we all were to grow up together."