It’s hard to say precisely where my love of sports began. As a kid, rather as a GIRL, I was heavily influenced by my father and brother, who were always talking about football, basketball and baseball. Each sport had a language and terminology that was fascinating to me and I made it my business to learn these in the way an exchange student consumes the phrases of a new culture. Why? Who knows, that’s just the way I came wired. My favorite thing in the world back then was trading cards. This gave me the opportunity to study stats and get to know players more intimately. I literally had boxes full of them under my bed. By the time I was ten, I was
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FALL 2019 AYSO.org
the first girl to start a game pitching in an all-boys league in my hometown. To say I was a sports geek would be an understatement. I spent all my time at Roxbury Park when I wasn’t at home. There was always a reason to be there. Baseball practice, tag football or kickball. One day, the park supervisor talked to all the other “park rats” about a new league called AYSO that was coming to town. It was a sport called soccer, and they had boys and