Number 9

I have played soccer since I was 3 years old.

I started playing from 3 years old to 5 years old when I lived in Boston.

Then when my family moved back to Oakville, I continued to play house league soccer age 6-9. I played in two leagues during this time. I played for a Burlington house league team at the same time as playing house league in Oakville. While playing in Burlington, I also participated in a developmental program in once a week during the summers.

Unfortunately there was a lot of politics in the Oakville soccer league, which lead me to quitting the league and trying out for Rep in Dixie, Mississauga.

My best friend’s dad decided to start up a Rep soccer team in Dixie, and recruited tones of players from Mississauga, Burlington and Oakville to come and play for him.

The coach signed us up for a boys league in order to toughen us up. We would also play in leagues with teams that were one or two years older than us to develop our skills and challenge ourselves.  Practices were held 3-4 times a week plus 1 or 2 games. We would practice for 3 or 4 hours at a time on weekends, running lengths of the field over and over again. Each practice would start with 12 laps of the track. This hard work and dedication eventually lead us to being the first team in the league. At age 14, we were introduced to the OYSL, which was a league of the top 10 teams in Ontario. This year also happened to be my last year playing for Dixie. The coach’s tactics were all about screaming and yelling at a bunch of 14 year old girls and I couldn’t handle that anymore.

The following year I moved the Brampton. Brampton won the Ontario Summers Games when I was 16 years old, beating Dixie (my old team) in the finals. Brampton then moved to be the number 1 team in Ontario, always battling with Dixie for the number 1 spot. I played for Brampton until the age of 18 before going off to university.

Attending school in the USA on a scholarship was never my thing. I am very much a homebody. I was offered a chance to play at Dalhousie in Halifax and turned it down due to the distance. Soccer will always be my go-to sport and has always been a huge part of my life. I made some of the best friends playing soccer and had the best experiences of my life on the field.