My Work

COVID puts Soccer on the Sidelines

Jacob Thurmeier

Soccer Enthusiest has her entire career turned upside down due to Covid restraints. Danika Niven started soccer at a very young age, at 3 years old her father threw her on the field and she's been playing ever since. Danika played for 12 years until the unthinkable happened. COVID stopped any opportunity to play soccer. With the 1 year anniversary of COVID restricting child sport, Danika explains how soccer has affected her life and how she has dealt with the blow of COVID.

Danika Niven was not always a fan of soccer, infact when she first started playing the sport she hated it. She didn’t like being told what to do and how to play soccer. As Niven mentioned, “Even though I was really really young I always hated people treating me like I was really really young”. But the passion in her heart for soccer ignited and has never burnt out. Danika Niven started her career in soccer in Cochrane. She moved to Sherwood Park, just outside of Edmonton, joining a new soccer team for a few years before returning to Cochrane when she was 11. Despite moving to Cochrane and again, starting with a new soccer team, the Cochrane Wolves, her team won both the indoor and outdoor Provincial Championships. Niven said, “being able to win a provincial championship had been a goal of mine forever”. A few months before COVID struck, Niven moved to a new soccer club. This was not out of the ordinary for Niven, at this point she knew she could adapt and assimilate into a new team. She was looking forward to carrying out the same goal of winning the Provincials with the Rangers FC. Change was hard and yet even with these difficulties nothing would compare to what the pandemic would bring.

COVID stopped everything. The lockdown enforced by the Alberta Government made it impossible for sport to continue. Despite the negativity that COVID brought, Danika Niven felt that the pandemic and restrictions had made her more “independant” as she stated, “taking the time to get to all my Zoom calls”, however, missing the joy of actually playing soccer hit her hard. Niven had only been back playing soccer in Cochrane a short time before lockdown, commenting “I didnt realize I had just joined a new team and that I had to go into lockdown so soon”. To make the situation even harder on her, Niven had just started to make relationships with her teammates as she mentioned “I wish I had had the time to build better relationships with the other girls”.

Moving cities, trying to deal with the assimilation of new soccer teams and even the pandemic hasn’t stopped her from doing what she likes best. All of Niven’s difficulties over the years has given her resilience, in s0ccer and in life. Playing now, for what seems like forever has definitely allowed her to bond with the sport. It has allowed her to build great relationships, realize her passion and to never to take anything for granted. Danika Niven believes that her soccer career will carry on into the future and rightly so.