“In my last month of high school at University Prep, I worked with the Seattle Reign professional women’s soccer team for my senior project, which is also the academy team that I played for during my last two years of club soccer. One of the things I was asked to do while at my senior project was to interview a player on the team. Just by chance, I was tasked to interview Megan Oyster who was an injured player at the time, which made it convenient for her to step out of practice for a few minutes. She happened to have gone to UCLA and played soccer there, and at that point, I also knew I was going to attend UCLA but not to play soccer. I later talked with her more in depth about her experience at UCLA and how she enjoyed the soccer program, and I mentioned that I was quite interested in pursuing collegiate soccer, even at such late stage in the college process. She put me in contact with the coaches at UCLA and it all went from there! Coincidentally, the UCLA women’s soccer team plays Seattle Reign annually in the spring and my club coach, Sam Laity, is also the assistant coach for Seattle Reign, so he vaguely knows the coaches at UCLA. He put in a good word for me at UCLA and all the pieces fell into place. I found out I would be going down for pre-season at the beginning of July and flew down at the end of July. A dream come true.”
