How To Ask A Soccer Player To Homecoming
Under the Friday night lights at Atlantic Coast, the homecoming princess wore a football helmet.
For Gaby Rourke, wearing a lot of hats is nothing new.
On Th afternoon, information technology was a cowboy hat, part of her costume for homecoming festivities. On Friday evening, she donned the tiara of the Atlantic Coast High School homecoming princess. And, in between, a football game helmet. Really.
The Atlantic Coast junior, the first girl to compete for the Stingrays' varsity football game squad, performed double duty Friday night — homecoming princess and part-time identify-kicker during high schoolhouse football confronting Raines.
And for Rourke, information technology's just ane part of an off-the-charts able-bodied autumn for a multi-sport athlete in a sports world that frequently values specialization.
"If there'south a competition, I'll be in," she said. "It could be who can clean the fastest, or who can run the fastest, but I'll try my best to exist the all-time."
She won a spot on the Stingrays' varsity football squad over the summertime... and juggles volleyball for Atlantic Coast... and social club soccer at Florida Aristocracy Soccer Academy. Beginning with the regular season opener on Nov. 9, she'south preparing to have the field for the Stingrays' girls soccer squad as well.
Simply for 2 more than weeks, she'southward prepared to compete against high school boys in varsity football, against opponents several inches taller and well over 100 pounds heavier.
"It'south just her overall being an accommodating athlete to where she tin can practise it, whether she'due south kick a football, a soccer brawl, heck, a tennis ball or whatever," Atlantic Coast football coach Mike Montemayor said. "She only has that natural power to simply kick information technology, and she's got some good ability behind that leg besides."
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BLAZING A TRAIL FOR STINGRAYS
Circle Sept. nine as the day when Rourke's milestone moment became official, when she stepped onto the field for the second-half showtime in a 22-half-dozen loss to Westside.
"It was definitely surreal," she said of her first beginning. "It felt like a film, honestly, hearing the crowd auspicious your name and seeing the opponent directly alee of y'all looking y'all dead in the optics while you're kick off."
Even with 250-pound blockers stampeding in her direction, she said she didn't want the showtime to exist her only statistic.
"I was actually hoping to be able to get a tackle that game, just you know, my defense stopped it for me," she said.
With that kickoff, Rourke joined the select number of girls to compete aslope boys in high schoolhouse football. As of 2018-19, the final year with complete statistics not affected by the coronavirus pandemic, the National Federation of State High School Association's almanac participation survey listed 89 girls competing in football in Florida, mostly as kickers.
The Jacksonville area has produced several of the Sunshine Country'south notable stories of girls on the gridiron. Seven years agone, Bolles' Erika Clark earned honorable mention All-State honors at the kicker position, a Northeast Florida first.
Chris'tal Smith made an fifty-fifty rarer breakthrough during her ninth-course flavour in 2017 at Wolfson, lining upwards at running back, on defence force and on special teams. In her beginning varsity game, she rushed viii times for 37 yards, and fifty-fifty forced a fumble.
In the last half-dozen years, a few others have also seen activeness: Among them, LizAnne Fogarty kicked for Clay and booted a crucial field goal in a decisive district game against Palatka; First Coast's Amber LaGatta delivered a game-winning field goal confronting the Stingrays in 2016; and Fletcher's Kindree Sullivan, like Rourke a multi-sport athlete, kicked for the Senators at one phase in the 2020 flavor.
Rourke said it was Sullivan's success with Fletcher that motivated her to effort her new sport. If one All-Gateway Briefing soccer star could win on the gridiron, why couldn't she become the next?
"I kind of was simply like, human, I want to be able to do that," she said. "I want to be able to do something that no ane else has washed before and kind of leave my name in the history books. It was a claiming because you know it'southward never been done before at Atlantic Coast, and I just wanted to be the first to practice information technology."
Still, football didn't enter the motion picture as a serious option until this summertime. Around June, Rourke began training with sometime Jacksonville Jaguars kicker Mike Hollis, who himself made history earlier this year with a brief comeback at age 50 for the National Arena League's Jacksonville Sharks.
"I was merely getting the practice, merely to try information technology, and and so I realized, 'You know, maybe I practice want to do this,'" she said.
'A LITTLE OVERWHELMING'
During the summertime, the question came in for Montemayor: Was Atlantic Coast football game ready for ane of its accommodating athletic aces in girls sports to join the football game team?
"She has a great leg, and when she approached me most it, I didn't hesitate," Montemayor said.
Nonetheless, Rourke wondered how the aligning would progress — both how she would adapt to the sport and how her new teammates would respond. Over the last two months, that bond has grown.
"Information technology was definitely a different experience," she said. "Information technology was a little overwhelming, you lot know, being the only girl out there, and information technology'south a different environment for me and the other football players. And they were a trivial cautious at commencement and they didn't know if I was really here to play football or if I was actually here to just to be the director or whatever, but they've become accepting of me and they treat me similar a true teammate."
So by the time Th's football practise rolled around, Rourke was just one of the players on the team, laughing, joking and tugging on helmets with teammates during pauses between boot drills.
Although she hasn't all the same notched points on the scoreboard in football game — Kristian Karoglan, a senior with a powerful and proven right leg that delivered the game-winning field goal confronting Mandarin in 2021, has handled the majority of the Stingrays' kicking this flavor — Rourke has worked to make herself ready for that responsibility if it comes about.
Two more games — Friday at Creekside and Nov. 4 at home against Fletcher — remain to chase a run a risk at points on the football field in her inferior year. Through 3 months of do, she'south stretched out her kicking range to effectually 45 yards.
"The hardest adjustment for me would definitely be my kick technique, because in soccer, you utilise the inside of your foot to pass," she said. "With football game, you use mainly the top of your human foot, so that would probably exist the hardest aligning, learning how to boot correctly, with placement of the ball, ability and all that stuff."
A BALANCING ACT
Life as a football kicker, a soccer goalkeeper, a volleyball middle blocker, a homecoming princess and — don't forget — a high school student means a life on fast-forward.
But taking on new challenges is familiar for Rourke, starting with her early years with her older brothers, Austin and Tyler. Both played loftier schoolhouse baseball game at nearby Parker, and Gaby was younger than her brothers past seven and eight years. Still, she constantly tried to keep up.
"They really inspired me to do everything that I'grand doing now... I've always looked up to them and I always wanted to exist them and, you know as a sibling you want to exist ameliorate than them," she said.
Gaby said finding the right sport took a while. She began in T-ball when she was iv, but pretty before long, she said she constitute the dull-paced life in the T-ball outfield wasn't for her: "I wouldn't go on the field unless I had a Ring Popular."
Her soccer experience came afterward, starting at age 8, and she didn't begin playing goalkeeper total-time until she turned 12. So came softball, plus volleyball and flag football, at present edifice the athletic resume to the point where every calendar week is a little bit wild.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, she played for Atlantic Coast volleyball in the District i-7A tournament, including a marathon Wednesday night semifinal confronting No. 1 seed Bartram Trail. Three times the Stingrays got within a point of knocking off the Bears in the fourth set, but Bartram Trail fought off three match points to cease Atlantic Coast's flavour.
And on Thursday afternoon, Rourke's week got even busier: She was selected as homecoming princess for the inferior class ahead of Friday's homecoming football against Raines.
The afternoon spun into overdrive. Later on completing a mid-afternoon walkthrough in advance of the following day's homecoming festivities, she hurried to prepare for the three p.chiliad. start of Stingrays' first week of soccer practice, participating in drills on the soccer field for about an hour and scoring in an intra-team scrimmage. Then a quick change into a helmet and pads, and a brisk walk across the campus to the football practice field to begin field goal practice.
It'due south a commitment of several hours each twenty-four hours, plus further travel for guild soccer practice and tournaments out of town. By now, she's used to scrambling across campus from exercise to practice during afternoons, and then heading out to club practice and — when free time pops upward — staying up to date on homework.
"How she balances that on top of being a good educatee is beyond me," Montemayor said. "Some kids have a hard time only balancing ane sport with academics."
The workload was huge. Notwithstanding, when Rourke approached Atlantic Coast girls soccer coach Kenny Mukasa before the season to tell him she was interested in adding the gridiron to her routine, he didn't object.
"I told her, I believe in you. If you think you can do it, I believe you can do it, merely information technology's upwards to you lot in terms of fourth dimension management," Mukasa said.
Optics ON THE SOCCER FIELD
Football is getting the attention correct now. But Rourke views soccer as her futurity.
As a sophomore, she earned selection to the All-Gateway Conference team, lining up at nearly every position on the field for Atlantic Declension — a sharply different feel from her usual routine every bit a club goalkeeper. Terminal year, she tallied xi goals and three assists in the Stingrays' regular flavour.
"It's definitely been a fun experience," Rourke said. "Information technology actually just kind of gives you a different perspective of things, especially every bit a goalkeeper. I could be thinking, you lot know, if I was a striker, what kind of ball would I desire? Or if I was the center dorsum, where would I get? It kind of helped a lot, like understanding the positions and what I should say. Because every bit a goalkeeper, it's a leadership role and you take to give information, because you see everything back in that location."
Schools in the nation's premier soccer conferences are taking notice. This calendar week, she's scheduled to take a visit to Kentucky in the SEC. Over in the ACC, Pitt is besides among the leading pursuers, and multiple other NCAA Segmentation I programs are also in the running.
For Duval County public schools, that's a lot of fizz. Mukasa said the last Atlantic Declension player during his tenure to describe comparable recruiting attending was Danielle Gordon, who earned All-Showtime Declension honors in the mid-2010s and ultimately signed with Due west Virginia.
"One minute she could be in goal, another infinitesimal she could be in a center back role," Mukasa said. "She may play outside back, maybe upwardly front scoring goals for u.s.a., which is where she did a peachy, great job last year for us."
Rourke'southward mother, Cindy, said the family has heard for years from soccer coaches who have preached the importance of specialization. Now that colleges are inquiring, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way.
For those colleges, able-bodied versatility is a plus, and football is one more part of Gaby'south formula.
"[Other sports] really helped me with soccer," she said. "Volleyball has helped my vertical a lot. I think information technology's actually added three inches to my vertical.
"Football's helped me with unlike types of boot techniques. Softball, when I played my freshman yr, helped me with tracking the ball differently, learning how to track either a softball or a soccer ball. Flag football helped my catching power. And every sport normally helped me in the long run with other sports and helping forbid injury with using dissimilar muscles."
LOOKING Ahead
In the long run, Rourke said she's hoping to keep sports firmly in her routine. Peradventure someday, she said, she might work in the sports circulate field, trading goalkeeping gloves for a microphone. Her athletic dream, though, is to eventually build a career in professional soccer.
It's happened before in Gateway Conference soccer, fifty-fifty at the goalkeeper position.
5 years ago, Sandalwood'south Mandy McGlynn came upwardly through a similar soccer groundwork — goalkeeper at guild level, field player in high schoolhouse — and earned a phone call to the U.Southward. women's under-17 and under-20 national teams, representing the U.s.a. at the FIFA U-xx Women'due south World Cup in France. After playing college soccer at Virginia Tech and lining upwardly in the National Women's Soccer League with Sky Blue FC, McGlynn now plays in Sweden with Pitea IF.
Rourke is confident that her athletic pursuits — whether kick footballs or blocking volleyballs — are moving her in the correct direction.
"I've had a lot of people in my past life tell me you lot take to focus on one sport, specially because you want to go to college for soccer and you need to focus on this one sport and get improve at it. Only I'1000 a business firm laic that playing multiple sports tin help you get improve in the one you want to focus on," she said.
"What keeps me besides motivated is for the other people who desire to practise it but are too scared to. I kind of desire to exist someone that people can accomplish out to."
And maybe she's non finished adding to her sport drove. Side by side yr, she says, she's hoping to compete for Atlantic Declension in track and field.
Why not? After a season of staring down 250-pound maulers across the line, a high-spring bar doesn't feel intimidating.
"What keeps me motivated is actually the people who tell me I tin can't do it," she said, "because I beloved proving people wrong."
Clayton Freeman covers loftier school sports and more for the Florida Times-Matrimony. Follow him on Twitter at @CFreemanJAX, and sign up for the First Coast Varsity newsletter at https://profile.jacksonville.com/newsletters/first-declension-varsity/.
Source: https://www.jacksonville.com/story/sports/high-school/football/2022/10/24/atlantic-coast-kicker-gaby-rourke-juggles-football-girls-soccer-homecoming/8082955001/
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