Scoring Goals: Junior Natalie Scobie struggles to balance school and her social life because of her intense soccer travel schedule

Mondays: Light practice for an hour and a half. Tuesdays: Drills for an hour and a half. Wednesdays and Thursdays: Scrimmage for an hour and a half. Fridays: Travel days or off days. Saturday and Sunday: One or two games.

This busy, jam-packed schedule has been junior Natalie Scobie’s routine for the past seven years on her club team, Sporting Blue Valley Elite Clubs National League 2008.

Natalie has always dreamed of soccer being her professional career, professional career, now that she’s able to travel to places like Florida and Chicago with her team, she’s gotten to experience aspects of her dream.

Her most recent trip was this summer when she was picked out of 100 players around the globe to travel to Spain with KC Current and the rest of the girls picked from ECNL teams to compete with other Midwest teams. In Madrid and Barcelona, Spain, Scobie played numerous games against Midwest and  18+ Spanish teams including the Real Madrid Femenino 2nd team and FC Barcelona Women’s 2nd team.

Taking a trip to Spain with her team helped Natalie get a feel of what playing soccer professionally would be like.

“It was a good opportunity because I really got to showcase myself and my talents in front of the professional level,” Natalie said, “I think that’s a really good learning opportunity as a player and as a person. I matured more because it was more of a serious environment. I think that it showed me what it takes to be a professional player”

Throughout the numerous team trips, Natalie cherises the friendships she’s made the most from her soccer team.

“The people make soccer,” Natalie said. “All the friends and everything that I’ve met through soccer are like a big family to me and at the end of the day I feel like I can talk to them about anything and that’s a big part of it.”

Natalie’s love for soccer started 11 years ago when her parents put her on a Brookside recreational team at five years old. But it wasn’t until she was nine years old when she joined the Sporting Blue Valley club team, that her passion for soccer started to bloom and she dreamed of playing soccer professionally.

“At the age of maybe 12 or 13 you could tell she was a little bit different,” Natalie’s dad, Evan Scobie said. “At a very young age she would practice on her own and dribble on her own. So I think that’s a big part of it. At the end of the day you have to be born with some of it to be really good, you know and you’ve got to love it, and you have to live it at times, which she’s done.”

When Natalie isn’t working on her AP homework on Honors Algebra II, she’s is most likely at 

soccer practice, or traveling around the states for soccer. Her first full week of school since school started was last week — in late September — due to traveling to Spain and Michigan for soccer.

“Soccer has basically become my whole personality,” Natalie said. “It’s not because I like it, it’s just forced. We have so much that I don’t have time to go hang out with my friends, I don’t have time to go to functions or anything.”

Although soccer makes managing her school work so difficult, her love for the sport is far from gone.

 “In the end, soccer is what fulfills me,” Natalie said. “It gives me happiness, and every time I play I seek for that joy,  I really value that and it’s why I keep going every day