Conway soccer player earns spot on national team

— Alex Carter of Conway accomplished something recently no other Arkansas girl has ever done.

Carter was named to United States Soccer's under-14 Girls' National Team, becoming the first Arkansas female to make a national soccer team.

"She's the real deal" said Jeremey Bernard, director of coaching for the Westside Soccer Club who has also coached Carter with the Arkansas Rush for three years. "She's one of those kids that comes around every so often. She's just focused.

"You just hope they stay with it" Bernard, a former assistant women's soccer coach at the University of Central Arkansas, said he only knew of one Arkansas male soccer player to ever make a national team.

He added that one couldn't tell by looking at her that Carter was a dominating soccer player.

"Not until she gets on the field," he said of the center midfielder. "She's about average height, but she's a skinny girl. Her strengths, though, are her quickness, her ability to take people on one v. one, and her decision-making.

"She's a smart player." Carter, the daughter of Todd and Michelle Carter, grew up in Russellville and moved with her family to Conway during the summer.

She recently started her freshman year at ConwayHigh's East Campus. In addition to moving to a new town and preparing to start a new school, her whirlwind summer included U.S. Soccer's Olympic Development Program. After making the Arkansas ODP team, she went to Region III camp (Region III stretches from Oklahoma and Texas to the Carolinas) in Montevallo, Ala., in June.

"She got to go to the ODP camp the previous year and had a chance to see how it all worked, and she came home with the goal to make the regional team," Michelle Carter said. "That's been the goal for the last year, and honestly, I don't think we ever thought past that. We were just so thrilled when that happened"

But that wasn't the end.

After making the regional team, Carter was invited along with 100 other girls from across the country to the U-14 Girls' Identification Camp at Cal Poly Pomona in Pomona, Calif., inJuly. Thirty-six of that number made the National Team.

She returned home in August from a week-long stay at the U-14 Girls' National Team training camp at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif.

"I never really thought about the national team" Carter said. "I didn't even think I'd make it to national camp.

I was really satisfied with the regional team."

Carter started playing soccer when she was in first grade.

Her mother said she took to it immediately. Although she's dabbled in other sports such as gymnastics and basketball, soccer is now her exclusive sport.

What sets her apart on the soccer field?

"I'd say my passing and myvision of the field, just being able to see the field and find players and get the ball where it needs to go" Carter said. "Being able to distribute the ball"

Michelle Carter offered another idea.

"From an early age, she and my husband would go outside and work on her footskills, and that tends to be her strength now" she said.

Carter's summer experiences have opened new opportunities she hadn't much considered before.

"My goal is to get an athletic scholarship to a Division I school and to make the National Team for the U-17 Women's World Cup Team in 2012," she said. "I'd sort ofthought about that before, but not as much as I am now. The experience has really opened doors for me."

Bernard called her "goaloriented" and said he thinks those goals are reachable.

"She's not going to have a problem going to college," he said. "When she talked to me about it, I told her the most important thing is to make sure her grades are good enough and to score well on the ACT and SATs. Soccer will take care of the rest."

A straight-A student, Carter said shed learned from her ODP experiences the kinds of skills she needs to continue towork on to reach her goals.

"The coaches have told me just to get stronger and that I need to always know where my next pass is going to be, reading the next step and getting faster and quicker," she said. "I've figured out as long as I work hard at it, I can do pretty much anything I want to do"

During its training in Carson, Calif., the U-14 National Team played some games against older age-group club teams in the area.

"From the sound of things, she apparently did really well," Bernard said, adding that he expected her to be invited to the first event that a portion of the National Team would participate in. "They won't take all 36. It will be something like 18. And after playing some of thetop club teams in California, now when she plays, she has an unbelievable amount of confidence."

He said she would also play periodically this year in a national league with the Colorado Rush.

"She's getting a lot of exposure and a lot of experience that a lot of kids don't get," he said.

But with a National Team for every age group starting with U-14, Carter will need those tools to keep her spot. Bernard said the goal for U-14, U-15 and U-16 National Teams is to identify players for the 2012 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup team.

"Once you're on, you have to continue to go through the process, but they're going toknow who you are," he said. "You've still got to continue to play well because they're investing a lot of time in these kids.

Once you're on, it certainly makes it easier, but you have to continue to work to make the next age group"

Michelle Carter said Bernard was a big reason for her daughter's soccer success.

Alex blossomed as a soccer player, she said, with the Arkansas Rush.

"Alex is a great athlete and probably would've been good at whatever she put her time and effort in, but the reality is Jeremey is the person who taught her the game of soccer" she said. "Alex had some individual skills when she came to the team, but when you lookback at how it's all played out, you see that that is what prepared her for all this.

"Jeremey's made her the player she is. Matt Mittelstaedt, who's technical director of Rush, put a lot into her team, too.

The Rush organization in itself has given her some opportunities she would not have had otherwise to experience playing at a level you don't necessarily get a chance to play around here.

"There are lots of pieces that have brought it all together, and Jeremey is a very good teacher. Obviously, we wouldn't be where we are without him."

She added that her daughter's summer experiences had helped her grow up in someways.

But in others, she's still a teenager.

"She's traveled on her own and done a lot of things on her own she's never done before, and she's done well, but she still acts like a 14-year-old kid" Michelle Carter said. "Her dayto-day stuff is the same Alex as always."

River Valley Ozark, Pages 143, 145 on 10/04/2009

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