No one's soccer path. It doesn't have to be linear. You know, it doesn't have to go through these, like, marks of success to get to the highest level. Maybe you're not starting out at the highest pro level, but that doesn't mean that you can't get there someday.

We may laugh, we may learn, we might be your game's missing peace.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Soccer Girl pod. In this episode, we're talking to Racing Louisville and U.S. Women's National Team forward Emma Sears. In just her second year in the league,

Emma has already established herself as one of the league's most exciting young players. Emma's also

one of the best national team debut stories ever. She made her senior national

team debut in October last year against Ireland, where she scored and had an assist, the first

player to do that since Kristen Press achieved it. We talked to Emma about that debut, the bravery it took

for her to step away from the game in order to love it again, and what's like to not only have a

twin, but to play against them

in college that's so cool like and also like probably terrible for their parents but i like that can you

tell us what was that like when you got called into your first can't like were you expecting it were

you like surprised what was that feeling and like did you get a call? Is that how it worked?

Yeah. So I definitely was not expecting it necessarily. Up until October, I was having a good

rookie year and I was just kind of, you know, going through the highs and lows and just trying

to gain as much experience as possible. But growing up,

I'd never been called into any, like, youth national team camps or anything like that. I never

had exposure to the system at all. And some of my club teammates growing up, like, I had heard

that they'd been going to youth national team camps. And, you know, I was just never in that

pool of players.

And so I was definitely surprised to get the call up. It's funny, it was one of our off days,

and I was out shopping at Target, and my manager called me from racing. And it was such an

unexpected phone call. I was like, oh, my gosh, like, what did I do? He just had told me, he was like,

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