While the high school girls’ impressive soccer season has come to an end with a 12-7-1 record and making it to the sectional semi final for the first time since 2015, today you will be hearing a little bit more of one of the important members of the team, center back Emmi Chong. As a center back, she is constantly scanning the field and moving around waiting to clear the ball when it comes to her. Emmi Chong is a rising senior and has played soccer since second grade, inspired by her older brother. She has continuously played soccer since 2nd grade but stopped during the pandemic and then started back up in 8th grade. An important thing to look at as a season ends is looking at the future. Emmi says, “For club my goal is to reach out to more colleges, and for high school I want to go to the finals.” This high school season she has achieved a great goal of getting selected as first team all division.
Emmi had a later start than most to club soccer; she played one year in 3rd grade but stopped, and last year picked it back up by joining the Cedar Stars Academy. Club soccer is crucial if you want to play in the future. She says, “I think not playing club sets me back from other players. If I played I would have been much better.” A big question is, what’s the big difference between club soccer and high school soccer, and do you need both? “The pressure is different, there’s more pressure on a club team to do better personally as well as quickness and intensity has a big difference in high school because you are playing with a bunch of D1 players in a club team unlike high school, ” Emmi says. She recommends that younger kids just starting soccer who want to pursue it to definitely stay consistent and start young to achieve their goals. And a word of advice she would give to her freshman self is “to not compare myself to others and to believe in yourself mentally – soccer is 70% mental and 30% skill.”
Emmi is a very inspiring person. A teammate of hers and observing her over the past few years and especially over this past season I see the constant desire to be better. Talking to two of her teammates Noah Halabi and Aya Catran they say that Emmi is “a strong player in her actual skills and she is also a very good team player. She gets everyone hype, “ Noah says. She is very focused and dedicated and it is visible to everyone around her. She wants to play in the future and she is trying very hard to put that dream into a reality. “I actually only figured out last year I wanted to play in college during club.” Trying to play a college sport is a very hard thing to achieve, having to reach out to colleges, train, and also keep up with school can be overwhelming. Her goals are set high for her final season at Cresskill and hopefully a long future ahead playing soccer.
