“I don’t even care what anyone thinks, I know I look like a weirdo,” Nikki says as we walked into our local Panera Bread dressed in a sweatshirt, shorts, Nike socks, and Timberland boots, “sorry people, I just came from soccer, deal with it.” Her bright natural auburn hair that gave her the nickname “Lil Red” was shining in the sun as we walk from her Mercedes Benz into the building. Her short five foot frame with weak arms had a hard time opening the door. Once inside, Nikki pulled out her brand new Louis Vuitton wallet and debit card she got for Christmas and ordered her favorite thing: broccoli cheddar soup. As we go to sit down in the booth with a big rip in the leather, she says, “Ugh yes I’m so excited to eat this right now.”

She is an eleventh grader at Minnechaug Regional High School and has always been interested in soccer. She started very young, around 3 years old, because it was her dad’s favorite sport and he used to play. Nikki has a younger brother named Tim who is a freshman at the same school as her. He is currently on the Junior Varsity boys’ soccer team while she is on the girls Varsity team. Nikki describes soccer as a bonding thing; “We play in the yard all the time, and it is special because we push each other to be better.” 

When Nikki was younger she played on a travel team called Western Pioneers for seven years, but recently she left that team to join the U18 FC stars. When she was on the Western team, they won a tournament together, “It was my favorite memory ever playing soccer.” She claims there’s a better bond with the FC stars team than the high school one because they are with each other a lot more and do tournaments very often on the weekends. She quit the Western team because the coach and seven of the other girls she was close with were leaving, which is when she was asked to play on the FC stars. “I felt sad because we had been together so long, we were like family” she says about quitting Western last year.

“College soccer is definitely an option but if it interferes with my studies I might just not.” Nikki is thinking about either being a physical therapist/athletic trainer or an ultra sound nurse. Even though both options are very different she is interested extremely in both. Last year she pulled her PCL (which is in the knee) and ever since then she’s had to do physical therapy which made her fall in love with it. “If that doesn’t work, I wanna be an ultra sound nurse because I love kids and you get to tell people about their little babies and watch them grow in their bellies.” What she plans on doing senior year is taking anatomy and physiology so she can get a feel of what she’ll be studying in college. This year though she got selected to be in a leadership program where they learn about what to do in life situations such as like in an interview by talking and working with business people which she says helps a lot.

“Okay are we done now? I think that’s enough,” she asked as she just finishes her lunch. After she throws her stuff away we walked out the door and of course she runs to her car saying, “ohhh my godddd it’s so cold,” as if she doesn’t know the reason is that she is only wearing shorts.