When I turned five my parents had the choice of putting me on a softball team or soccer team. My brother had already been playing soccer and they couldn’t decide if they wanted the same for me. They eventually realized soccer was a more fit sport to push me into.
I am always happy with my parent’s decision. I have now been playing for 16 years and never quit. The problem that happened when I was younger was that there was no girl’s team in the program in Brentwood yet.
So my dad did as any eager parent would do, and signed me up for a boys’ team. I was the only girl on the team. I’m not going to sit here and lie about playing on that team because I barely did, I mostly cried. I didn’t want to play with boys but my parents never took me out.
Me every time i stepped on the field.
I don’t know if it was because they saw something in me, or they already payed for the season and uniform and didn’t want it to go to waste. But they were super patient with me, I didn’t play till the third week of starting on the team,
I scored my first goal that week and of course it was in the wrong net but still my parents cheered. It is actually on of the very few memories I have as a child. My second team was an all girls team, they were two years older than me.
I became more of an aggressive player from playing with the boys till I turned 10. So the age difference between me and the other girls was not as much of a challenge that my parents expected it to be.
Middle school soccer was probably the most fun experience I had. There are four middle schools in Brentwood and there’s a tournament against each school to see who the best is, I went to North Middle School.
Our school hadn’t won the championship since 6 years before I came into the picture, but I scored the winning goal that helped us win in the finals. The varsity women’s soccer coach was at that tournament and was impressed with how I played.
I made varsity soccer in the 8th grade and played till my senior year. The only reason why I was able to keep up with these girls was because of my experience I had when I was younger. I was not afraid to go in for a 50-50 tackle or head and ball that the goalie punts.
I also played for three years at SUNY Old Westbury. It was fun and a great experience. They gave me a huge poster after i stopped playing. I would love to play again, maybe not at old westbury, but at a different school.