Nicaraguan soccer prodigy

Page 19 | Sports

Nicaraguan prodigy on the pitch

As a 10-year soccer player, Flavia Jimenez aspires to play professionally after being on the National Nicaraguan team

BY SOFIA RODRIGUEZ, STAFF WRITER

SURROUNDED BY SOCCER her entire life, senior and co-captain of the Lady Cavaliers soccer team Flavia Jimenez would spend hours of her childhood playing outside alongside her cousins and friends while living in Nicaragua. Although much of her freetime was occupied by the sport, she did not start playing competitively until she came to the United States at the age of seven. Now as a player on the U17 Nicaragua team, Jimenez is able to pursue her anticipated professional career.

Both taught and motivated by her older brother, Jimenez began to play with different clubs within Miami as a center midfielder, just like her brother had. She started playing on a boys team with the Panthers Soccer Academy, then moved on to the boys Doral Soccer Club. In 2016 she was in the Paris Saint-Germain Academy, where the majority of her skills developed.

Now, playing in F.C. Prime on a girls team has become a new experience for Jimenez. For a player, having to switch from coach to coach becomes challenging, but it never took the opportunity away from Jimenez to learn new styles of playing soccer.

“Since she was young, she was competitive, ambitious and humble in which even the rivals along with their parents would respect her,” Jimenez’s brother Steve Jimenez said.

In addition to playing for many soccer clubs, being the cocaptain for the Lady Cavaliers soccer team is something Jimenez finds extremely meaningful. Gables athletics inspired her to pursue higher goals, such as trying out for the Nicaraguan national soccer team.

Starting towards the end of December of her junior year, Jimenez’s uncle introduced her name to the Nicaraguan Football Federation in hopes that his niece could play where she had longed to for years. Jimenez’s father then received the exciting call that she would begin to prepare for the U17 World Cup qualifiers later in April.

In Nicaragua, Jimenez got to the Estadio Nacional de fútbol in Managua, the country’s main soccer stadium, where she received her uniforms, met her teammates and started the process of her physical tests in order to begin playing. She then got into the routine of the team’s practices throughout the week along with the different soccer matches.

“I felt like a professional player walking out the tunnel and singing my national anthem,” Jimenez said.

Courtesy of Leonel Ramirez

The national team brought about extremely difficult challenges that Jimenez was not used to. Practices were a lot more intense, timely and exhausting. Apart from that, her new teammates had various forms of playing, such as the 4-3-3 formation, that she had to get accustomed to.

“In the Nicaraguan national team there was a head coach, assistant coach, physical preparator, tactical coach, goalkeeper coach, physical therapist and a doctor. Meanwhile at Gables there is only one head coach,” Jimenez said.

After long hours spent training and playing hard games, Flavia and her team made history by reaching the quarterfinals of the World Cup qualifiers. This not only brought tremendous joy to the girls but for Nicaraguan women as a whole.

Although Jimenez has faced hardships throughout her soccer career, specifically when she had to sit out for three months in 2019 because of a severe ankle sprain, she never let the eagerness of stepping back onto the field go. She wants to be able to continue to do what she is best at with new teammates and coaches who will help guide her along the way.

For the next time that she gets an opportunity like this, she will continue to train since she knows there is always room for improvement. As for the future, Jimenez aspires to continue to work hard to get into a D1 school with an athletic scholarship. h