Cal Young Soccer Experience

Cal Young Soccer Experience

By: Adrienne White

Date: Spring 2025

Picture a boy. In the middle of a field. Rain pounding down on his head and soaking his clothes. He’s running. Fast. Sprinting, even. He cradles the ball between his two feet with great precision as he sprints. His gaze is fixed on one thing and one thing only. The large box lined with a nylon net at the edge of the field. He ponders passing it before realizing that there is, in fact, no one. It’s only him left. He’s beat the last defender and now he only has one more enemy left. The goal. 

Roman Weidman is an eighth grader at Cal Young Middle School who plays on a club soccer team called Pelada. He started soccer at just five years old before beginning his shift to club soccer at 13 years old.

The majority of his soccer career has been spent playing Striker, though he used to occasionally dabble in being a goalie himself. He claimed it was because he said  “it got boring”— but now that he is older the running involved in the Striker position has become less boring. Currently, it is Roman’s off-season, though he plans to begin playing again later this year. He has big plans to try out for the varsity team in high school, where he also wants to continue in the striker position.  

His most recent stats include an average of 18 goals per season along with 15 assists per season. He has only received 2 yellow cards in his soccer career so far, though he claims to be a fairly aggressive player. He believes that with enough hard work and a continuation of the past’s vigorous practices, he might even be able to receive a soccer scholarship from colleges such as the University of Oregon.

Outside of soccer practice, Roman participates in other sports, such as football. Ultimately, Roman Weidman is an exceptional athlete. Between partaking in other extracurricular activities and staying on top of his grades, he manages to find a perfect balance between the two. 

Moving onto another Cal Young soccer player, we are going to let seventh-grade Olivia Wright take it away. A midfielder on the Sheldon Kidsports Seventh-Eighth team. She started playing in the state of Oklahoma at the age of six, but stopped due to the grass length which was “annoyingly long.”

After moving to Oregon, she began playing once again in fifth grade, switching to the position of defense. She, as expected, preferred this more, being that the majority of the fields she plays on here—rather than Oklahoma—are AstroTurf. After finding that she was more beneficial to the team back in her original position of midfielder, she switched back once more. She currently stands as the Secondary Midfielder on her team. With the season coming to a close, she has zero goals and seven assists. 

Outside of soccer, Olivia, too partakes in activities outside of school. She’ll do anything from taking hikes with her family to reading Historical Fiction books to help with her physical and mental condition. She also holds a steady A+ average, proving that soccer can in fact be balanced with academics.

To conclude, there are a wide variety of soccer players at Cal Young, and I have only listed a handful. This does not mean that everybody’s experience with soccer at the school has been pleasant, but out of the few people I’ve interviewed, it is safe to say that those kinds of experiences are possible. Many programs such as Kidsports and LYSA—public soccer teams— or Pelada and the Eugene Metro— club soccer teams offer enlightening soccer experiences that almost anyone can participate in. And though the pressure can be high, the practices can be tough, and the time commitment can be vast, it’s a small price to pay in the long run for a lifetime of soccer experience.