Archives: Story

Hi, I’m Marcela Ramírez. I was born on March 9, 1998 in the Colombian capital, Bogotá. From a very young age I always felt love for soccer, in fact I preferred to play with the ball Instead of playing with dolls. In 2007 my family moved to Villavicencio, a city located in Meta, a department in eastern Colombia.

There, I started my sports life when I was 9 years old. My first steps were in the futsal team of the College in which I studied. I played there until I was 17 years old, representing my educational institution. We were champions on several occasions at the departmental level.

Grewing up, I played with boys more than anything. My friends from school, from the neighborhood, on the blocks, on a micro-soccer or indoor soccer field nicknamed “the stream”. It was my favorite place. When I was 15 years old in 2013 I was given the opportunity to start playing soccer.

Until that time I had never played, it was quite a strong change, adapting to the dimensions of the field, to the ball, to the rules. But I always wanted to do everything right and although at the beginning it was difficult. Great coaches and very cracked teammates taught me a lot.

Starting to play at 15 years old is difficult. Because there are many girls that start when they are 5 or maybe 7 years old. Since they started from a very young age and because they had experience, that was a personal challenge for me. Because I had to learn in a few months what they learned in years. In the beginning I played with the national team of the Meta department. At the time I was 15 to 17 years old.

UGLY COMMENTS
Also with a recognized club called “Llaneras FC”. My process in the Meta Department was long and very useful. The biggest challenges I had was machismo. When I went out to play with my friends, the boys on the other teams were making ugly comments, when they were playing with a girl. At the school there were also girls and teachers who made somewhat unpleasant comments. The girls said that I was “tomboy” “that I behaved like a man to play soccer”. They looked at me uglily, obviously not all of them, but there are things that left their mark.

Even I remember a teacher who once told me in a meeting with my mom, that I would not get anywhere with soccer. That it was better to get me out of playing and dedicate myself to study. Always I had the support of my family, and they built a strong character in me. So I just left those bad things and listened to the good ones. While I kept playing, I really faced many people because of my love for soccer. But I also won the admiration of many others and that prompted me to continue preparing myself.

THE PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S SOCCER LEAGUE
In 2015 I finished my studies, I had studied at the Francisco de Paula Santander school in Villavicencio (Meta). From Third to eleventh, but I finished my studies at the Polytechnic Agroindustrial Institute of Villavicencio.
In January 2016 I returned to Bogotá with my family, looking for new opportunities. Thanks to the help of a teacher named Wilmer Mourinho. I entered a club called “Fortaleza CEIF”. By the beginning of that year, the news came out that in 2017 there would be professional women’s soccer in Colombia. Together with the coach and my teammates we prepared for that, since our team would also play the professional League.

At the end of 2016 I was selected to be part of the Fortaleza CEIF professional team. In January 2017 we started the preseason and weeks later I had the opportunity to debut as a professional player of the club of my loves Fortaleza CEIF.

NEVER GIVE UP
There were many things to get here, ill-intentioned people, discrimination, also family financial situations, moments in which you really feel like you can’t stand anymore. But there are always people with gold hearts who shake hands when we need it most. They, along with my family, encouraged me to never give up.

I debuted as a professional soccer player when I was 18 years old. Now I am 22 years old and I feel that I still have a long way to go. I dream of starting my university studies, I want to study sports training to motivate many boys and girls to follow the path of sport to get away from bad things. I also look to be able to continue in my sports career. Leaving a mark on people’s hearts; a positive mark on the world.

In my country, sport is a tool for change, for those who suddenly do not have the same opportunities, Due to the social inequality that shelters us and I want to be part of that social change. I am a woman of great faith in God. I believe that I owe everything to him. Because much of what I went through in my life could get me out of the way. I am living a dream and wanting to help many to fulfill theirs. Thank you!

My name is Lucy Sokoloff from US, I fell in love with soccer when I was six years old.

I played for my neighborhood team. It wasn’t that competitive. When I got too old to play for my neighborhood team my mom asked if I wanted to play for a travel team. I was hesitant about it because I didn’t know if I was good enough. Would I make it in the team? But when I found out I made it in the team I was so happy.

I remember the first time I went to a soccer game. The USWNT was playing, and watching them play was so inspiring. That’s when I knew I wanted to become a professional player. I want to inspire people like they did.

When I play soccer I want to remind people. If you work hard and tell yourself when times get hard that you are strong and you can do anything if you put your mind too.

Hey, my name is Lucia-Maria Schirling I am 16 years old and I am from Germany. Since I was 3 years old I play soccer.

I started playing in my village club, because I was too young and there was no team for my age. So I played in the team of my 2 years older brother. I had a lot of fun even though everyone was older and bigger. And I was the only girl in the group but I never lost fun. When I was 5 years old I joined my brother’s team. My father soon realized that I had talent. I went to the soccer field with him when I was 5 years old and trained.

Even as a small child I was very ambitious and never wanted to lose. When I got older, I changed clubs, where I became champion with my boys team. There I was voted best player of the season. I think it helped me a lot that I played with the boys, I learned to assert myself . Even if I was often looked at stupidly because I play football, I didn’t give up and bow my head.

When I was 10 years old I moved from my hometown Regensburg to Nuremberg to go to a sports school there. Actually I wanted to go to a boarding school, but I was too young for that. So my father, to whom I owe a lot, moved with me. A lot has changed for me this year. I have become more mature, more self-confident and more independent.

THE FIRST TIME PLAYING IN A GIRLS TEAM
But the biggest change was not to live in a new city. But my new club, the 1.FC Nürnberg, where I played with girls for the first time. I already played in the U15 when I was 10 years old, which means that I played with 4 years older girls. But also against them. In the new school I always had training before school, Therefore I usually had school until 16 o’clock. And after school I trained with the club again.

After 2 years I changed the club and went back to the boys, but then I had a knee injury. The doctors didn’t know what I had, I was thinking about quitting football. But thanks to my father I never stopped following my passion of playing football. It were two difficult years for me. After months of training without ball, finally after a training with ball my knee hurt again.

Months went by, I have never stopped fighting and never stopped training. After these 2 years was the most successful year of my career so far we have moved up and I have personally changed as an athlete and as a person very much. I never had thought since then to give up my dream of professional footballer. And I can say that through this injury I have come a little bit closer to my goal.

So never stop giving everything for your dream. Do what is necessary and even more. never give up and train hard, because only talent is not enough. But the most important thing is to have fun.

Hi, my name is Haley from I started soccer when i was 3 years old from US.

It was indoor lessons for toddlers. I did it for a little bit but didn’t really like it so my parents took me out. Then when i was 4 I saw older girls playing soccer on the field behind our house and i told my mom i wanted to play. They looked like they were having so much fun.

So my parents signed me up for a park district league with some of my friends. My dad was one of the coaches and that was great. We had alot of fun together and were undefeated for two years.

Then some friends from my team and I decided to tryout for a club soccer team. We made it and were so excited. Club was alot harder because we were learning so much and practicing more.

This is when i really fell in love with the sport. My favorite athlete is Alex Morgan and I would love to play soccer in college and on the US women’s team some day.

My advice is to give different sports a try. I have played basketball, softball, gymnastics along with soccer. I love all sports in general but my absolute favorite is soccer. Dream big!

My name is Kimberly Estrella Guerrero Padilla. I am a 17 year old girl from Mexico. I play soccer since I was 10 years old. My history in soccer is similar and too different from the others. I practiced all sports gymnastics, karate, basketball, tennis, athletics and many others. Soccer had not caught my attention so much until at the age of 8. My dad took me to all his games and saw him play as he said I am great with the ball.
I continued in gymnastics until 10 years of age. Then I told my dad I want to be a footballer like him. At that moment my life changed and everything became football. My father started training me. Thanks to him and my mom, I got very far. When I was 11 years old, my dad got me into two atlas men’s soccer teams.

THEY MADE ME LESS FOR BEING A WOMAN
In both teams they made me less for being a woman. Thanks to that and to my father who trained me 2 more hours of training with them, at 12 years of age I became captain of the lion team kids (atlas).

In a game there were spectators. They saw me and they gave me the invitation to represent Guanajuato with the Guanajuato team. We went to the national team, but we never won to the front. They put me on defense because of how high I tried.

After that I had many scholarships for my High School. So I entered a scale called Itesba, at 14 years old I already played with High School and university. At 16 years of age I was invited to a national with my school we won thanks to me we were 2-1 with my 2 goals. I saw that there were many viewers and there it all started they invited me to play with the under-17 of León.

I WAS CHOSEN FOR THE CLUB AMÉRICA TEAM
Then I did tests for the club América team of 38 girls we were 8 and of those 8 only 2 we were the ones who traveled to Coapa Mexico. Arriving there there were other filters to pass in total we were 58 girls. After several filters only 2 were chosen and one of them was me.
I started to play for the club América in its sub-17. It lasted a long time until Querétaro saw me and they made me part of them and I played for the Querétaro club in its sub-17. Only few girls could go to a tournament called the biggest cup in las vegas Snowfall. Out of those girls they chose me to go. When I went I played with a team from Los Angeles. I started to play goalkeeper in the tournament and I got many scholarships for college.

Now my life is focused on being a lawyer in the United States and maintaining my good sports scholarship.

Hello, my name is Emily,

I am 14 years old and I have been playing football for 5 years. I am from London which is in the United Kingdom.
It all started by playing for my school team as a defender and eventually the captain. When I moved schools at the age of 11 I discovered that I really enjoyed being a goalkeeper. For that I had some natural talent which I wanted to embrace.

Trailling for my school teams made me the no.1 goalkeeper which I was very happy about. Then I joined my local club which prepared me for moving up into a high standard league. I ended up trialling with Tottenham at the end of my first year playing club football. I did really well in the trials but after all of the rounds I was rejected.

It made me upset for a few weeks. But it only made me stronger and gave me the desire to improve and become the best I could be. Finally I had a successful trial with the club I played for this season – Highbury Wolves. I got to play a variety of academies and it has set me in good stead to trial for an academy for the up and coming season.

Coronavirus has crushed some really exciting opportunities I had for this year. But I will only be better when they happen next year. In the meantime I am training almost everyday to become the best goalkeeper I can be.
PLAYING FOR ENGLAND – MY FUTURE GOAL

My goal for this year is to get into an academy and keep on improving. My long term goal is to play for England and in the Women’s super league.
I know that I am going to have to make some tough decisions about my future in the next few years. So the work I put in now is more important than ever.

Already I made such an improvement since my first ever goalkeeper session in October 2018 and also since last years trials. Now I look back on my academy rejection as a good thing as it made me a better player because of it. Hopefully things work out for next season and I end up at a good academy which will help me development further.

Whatever you do, don’t let rejection get you down take it as a point to improve on to become better than ever before.
Never give up on your dreams, as long as you put in the hard work you will succeed. You have to believe in yourself!

Hi my names Chloe 🙂 I’m 13 years old from UK and I play football.

I started playing football when I was about 6 but then yet broke my ankle in the same year , I felt football for a few years until I came back at 10 willing to give it another go.

I started playing with my primary school team and joining in with training every Thursdays. After a year passed of me playing football I asked my dad if I could play for my local team…

A few weeks later we got a response saying we would love Chloe to join come for training on Wednesday! I was over the moon I could finally play for a team and play matches.

I was with them for a year until I had to move clubs. Unfortunately I had to move once again, but where I am now is the best team I’ve been too, I feel like I have improved so much on this team. Also in the first year of me being there we won the county cup !!

I would love to inspire girls to play football or to do what they love most. Never give up when things get hard, if you have a dream you need to be willing to fight…

My name is Camila Miranda I am an 11 year old girl from Mexico. I’ve been playing soccer in a team for about 6 years now.

When I was 5 years old, I started playing soccer . Since then I fell in love with the game.

I started playing in a team called Cracks which was just opening a team for girls. Me and two of my friends from school entered and we plus two other girls were the only female players. Our team started growing and more girls came in. We had very few games at first because there were not many teams of out age. The few ones we had we lost almost all the time.

Later on when we were about 7 there started being more small tournaments with girls of our age. We finally started to win! First many small cups and later we entered a league and made it to the final. We lost the final game. All were excited anyways because it was our first time in the league and we made it to the final! After that I played on a small 1v1 tournament and I won all my matches!

On December of that year we had our first tournament out of the city, It was McAllen and we won second place and it was so fun!

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS
On the next year’s league we made it the final again. This time we were champions! I won the best scorer award and MVP (Most Valuable Player) of that league. The next year we made it to the final again but we lost. It was an awful feeling but I knew I needed to change my attitude and get up and train harder than I did last year. Right now I am working and training really hard. So that I can improve and be better than I was last year.

Because I want to be a professional soccer player and play a World Cup representing my country. But to get to that I have to enjoy the process and work harder and harder every day.

The process you have to go through to achieve your goals is almost as awesome as the results.

Hi, my name is Isabella Williams, I am currently 15 years of age from Australia and I started to play soccer when I was 6 years old.

I knew I had passion for the game when the ball touched my feet. The first ever game I had I can remember quite clearly. I was very shy and nervous and wasn’t quite sure if I had the courage to play in a team full of boys. But as I stepped on the field I played my best and ended up scoring 8 goals for my first game ever of football.

My dad introduced me to soccer and I wanted to follow his footsteps and make him proud. He unfortunately passed away so that is what pushes me every day to train hard and work hard.

I played for a league from ages 6-11 and learned some super useful and skill full aspects of the game. I knew that I wanted to step the level of the game up. So I went and tried out for a higher league at the age of 12 and ended up making it into the team which I was super proud of. From making the team I knew that I wanted to play centre attacking mid. I love this position because it’s good to assist teammates and also be able to score goals yourself.

PLAY IN ENGLAND
Last year I was super lucky to get invited to get a 2-week experience in England. I played against top teams and also experience the culture and the love and passion they have for the game over there. This really inspired me that I want to play over in England one day and that I need to train hard to achieve this goal.

Overall so far in my football career I have learnt never to give up either if you win or lose. It is not always about winning just being out there with your team is a privilege. Always train hard set goals and achieve them. Your goals are also possible if you work hard for them.

Actually her health hack is very easy. It is not about doing something, just about not doing something.
I think it is best to let USWNT soccer star Alex Morgan talk herself!
Alex Morgan is vegan because she loves her dog, Do you also have a dog? How does it feel to pet your dog while you eat other animals?

Alex Morgan is part of a growing trend, that athletes of all sports get more concious about their body, their health and about other living creatures.

“I’m passionate about giving animals a voice,” Morgan told Reuters recently. “I even adopted a vegan diet, because it didn’t feel fair to have a dog I adore, and yet eat meat all the time.”

Along with Morgan — and five other women on the U.S. world cup soccer team, plus retired World Cup player Heather Mitts — other pro athletes who eat vegan include tennis star Venus Williams (who went plant-based to improve symptoms of her autoimmune disorder, reportedly to great effect) and Olympic cyclist Dotsie Bausch, who is so passionate about the issues involved that last year she formed a nonprofit called Switch4Good, promoting science-based benefits of a dairy-free lifestyle. She said in the documentary The Gamechangers: “When I went plant based, I wasn´t sure, if I am gonna survive. And I actually became like a machine”. (See trailer below)

Decide yourself what you want in life, what you want to achieve and where you want to be in 10 years from now. Do you really want to give your body the very best that it deserve. Or if you want to give your body the things that commercials tell you? I will not tell you what to do. I just tell you to think about it and come then to a decision that makes you feel good about your future. But don´t change your mind every two months.

If you decide now to become vegan, its fine. If you decide veganism is not for you, also fine. It is your body and your future, you have to live inside of it every single day. But if you want to switch to a plant based diet now, it is very important that you read this:

There are several vitamines and mineral nutrients that your body needs on daily basis. The most critics of a vegan diet say that you get sick because your body gets not enough of this nutrition. They are right. The only thing that they do not tell you is that this nutrients are also not in animal products naturally. Like for example Vitamin B12. Wikipedia says: “the only organisms to produce vitamin B12 are certain bacteria, and archaea. Some of these bacteria are found on plants that herbivores eat” (not in industrial farming) In the industrial animal farming the Vitamin B12 is supplemented to the food of the animals. So the meat eaters have normally more Vitamin B12 than vegans. Vegans need to take supplements themselves to have enough Vitamin B12.

Another important mineral nutrient is iron, especially for you as a female. During your period you lose blood, which contains a lot of iron. So you need to be aware that you need to comensate that with your nutrition.

Three other things are calcium, Vitamin D and protein. But with a well-balanced nutrition and enough sunlight, they will not be a big problem for you. But if you want to know more, make your own research.

In the end I want to say that you should avoid highly processed food as well as unhealthy vegan stuff. The documentary The Gamechangers for example shows some football players eating vegan fastfood. I would not recommend that.