Why is she in the news?
On April 21, a group of young female soccer players gathered at Fortius Sport & Health in Burnaby for Girl Talk: Women Inspiring Girls in Soccer and Life, an event organized and moderated by a 16-year-old soccer player who hoped the event would inspire other young athletes to chase their dreams.
Ella Sandoval-Carlsten, who lives in West Vancouver, plays high-performance soccer for the Burnaby-based u16 Mountain United FC team. Girl Talk is the manifestation of a project she worked on during a leadership camp last summer.
The hour-and-a-half evening event included special guest speakers Candace Chapman, Karina Leblanc, Janine Beckie and Sophie Schmidt from the Canadian women’s national soccer team, and former U.S. Olympian and World Cup U.S. National Women’s team player Julie Foudy, now a soccer analyst and reporter for ESPN, who appeared via video webcast.
During the event, Sandoval-Carlsten led a discussion between the athletes and girls, focusing on topics she felt were important to aspiring soccer stars like herself. She also opened the forum up to the girls in the audience and encouraged them to ask their own questions.
“It went great! We raised about $2,000 and had 70 people attend,” she wrote in an email to the NOW following the event. “It was an amazing night.”
With the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup just around the corner, Sandoval-Carlsten hoped the event would raise awareness for women’s soccer and the “unique challenges and successes facing girls and women.”
The money raised at the event will be donated to two charities, Soccer Without Borders and Canada SCORES, a relatively new non-profit in Burnaby that runs after-school programs that combine poetry and soccer for at-risk and vulnerable youth at Edmonds, Taylor Park Elementary, Stride Avenue Community School and Twelfth Avenue Elementary. The NOW spoke with Sandoval-Carlsten before the event.
The NOW sat down with Sandoval-Carlsten a few days before the event to hear more about her plans, her life and where she hopes to go after high school.
Tell me about yourself.
I’ve played soccer ever since I was three. I used to dance as well, but I had to choose between dance and soccer, so I chose soccer.
I play every day. I play on my high school team, I play with (Mountain United FC) and I also play in a White Caps academy team on the weekend.
I try and hang out with my friends when I can. I basically just play soccer and go to school.
How did you get started in soccer?
I was really young and I think my parents just, because my friends were doing it, put me in. I started playing, and I played indoor when I was really little, when I was three, and I basically went through all the levels – I was in house, then select and now here. This is the highest league in the province.
I also play on provincial (teams), so players from the (high performance) league will go to provincials and we play against other provinces in Canada.
What’s your favourite thing about soccer?
I like that it’s a team sport. Every team I’ve been on has been really great, especially the one I’m on now. When I play I still love it even though I have to play every day. It’s still fun every time I have to go out.
What else?
I love what it can do for people. I’ve volunteered a lot as a coach and it’s really great to get people active, and it’s so fun and it’s really internationally recognized. So when I travel I can play with people I don’t know.
Tell me about Girl Talk.
My dad went to his reunion and met this girl named Julie Foudy, who was the captain on the U.S. national team, and she told him about this camp that she runs in the summer that’s about soccer with a leadership component.
So I went, and one of the parts of the camp is you have take on your own initiative. I started thinking, … especially with the World Cup coming up, I wanted to have awareness about women’s soccer and have women talk about their experience because a long time ago women didn’t get recognized for playing soccer, and Julie was a huge part of getting the recognition for the sport.
Now the World Cup is such a big thing for women, I just wanted people to be talking about that, especially to young girls who are looking up to the national team.
What’s your plan for the event?
(The female athletes) will talk about their experience playing collegiate soccer or being in the World Cup, things like that. And people will have a chance to ask questions, and we’ll auction off some signed jerseys.
What will you be talking about at the event?
When I was thinking about the topics for the speakers, it was what I would want to know, just aspiring to be like them – playing in college and playing professionally, because they’ve obviously been successful, how did they get there?
How did the athletes react when you asked them to participate in Girl Talk?
They were really encouraging. Since I’m so young, they thought it was a really good I was trying to take it on. I definitely had to be really persistent because they’re so busy. I had to email multiple times to get responses, but everyone was as supportive as possible, trying to help out as much as they could.
What are you hoping people take away from the event?
I’m hoping that people will be, on some level, inspired by what they have to say and be able to ask questions about what they’re wondering about.
This is a good opportunity to talk to people who are so successful in soccer. A lot of people who are coming are from my club, and this is a high-level club, so they’re aiming to be as good as the people who are speaking, so I want them to be able to ask the questions they want and be inspired by what they have to say.
What are your expectations for the event?
I know it’ll be a really great thing because at first it was really hard to get speakers but … I just realized I’ve already raised a lot of money just by doing this so it’s all positive.
Where do you see yourself in a few years?
I’m definitely aiming to play soccer in college and I want to keep taking stuff on like this.
The money I’m raising (for Soccer Without Borders), I’m actually going to bring to Nicaragua as well as equipment I’ve collected. I’m helping in a camp with young kids and training them to play soccer. They have a really cool program for how the kids can earn the equipment.
