By Gabe Foo
Manager, MVLA Avanlanche
Abby Dahlkemper of Menlo Park, a member of the Mountain View/Los Alto Avalanche soccer team, along with her teammate Kelsey Foo, are members of the Under-15 Girls U.S. National Team.
The U.S. team recently competed in a high-intensity training camp at Stanford. Dahlkemper is a forward and Foo plays as a center-midfielder on the U.S. and Avalanche teams.
The Avalanche won the 2007 Cal-North State championship.
Dahlkemper and Foo also travel and compete in the U.S. Olympic Development Program for youth soccer.
The journey to reach the U.S. National Team took three years of intense tryouts, hundreds of soccer games, travel across the country, and thousands of miles commuting to and from soccer practice.
They started their journey back in 2005, when they competed against 120 of the top soccer players in the Bay Area, and were selected to the local district Olympic development team.
The following year, they were invited to tryout for the Cal-North State Olympic development team, where six of their MVLA Avalanche teammates also made the selection over 120 of the best soccer players from Northern California.
In June 2006, they competed against 140 of the top soccer players from the Western U.S. (13 states from Colorado west to Hawaii), and made the 30-player pool selection for the Regional Olympic development team.
Last July, they traveled to Cal-Poly Pomona to compete and tryout against the top 100 players in the U.S.
Dahlkemper, a powerful and prolific goal-scoring forward, immediately caught the eye of Tad Bobak, the U.S. national team coach. She was invited to join his U14 Girls U.S. national team camp last September, but could not attend due to back injuries.
It took Abby nearly two months to recover and rebuild her fitness and strength. A lot of focus, determination and hard-work was needed to attain her top competition form.
Foo was exhausted at the July camp last year after months of soccer tournaments and Olympic development camps, and did not show well in front of the national team coaches. She returned from camp and kept working on her soccer game. A second chance came last September when her regional Olympic development coach asked Kelsey to guest play with his club soccer team, and to compete against the very U14 Girls U.S. national team she wanted to join.
She flew to Los Angeles and played a great game controlling the tempo of the midfield, and even scored against the U.S. team. Her performance caught the eye of Coach Bobak and she was finally on his radar screen.
Last January, both were called into the U15 girls national team camp at the Home Depot Center (home of the U.S. National Team, along with David Beckham and the LA Galaxy) and spent the week training and trying out for the U.S. Team.
More information on Avalanche is at eteamz.com/Avalanche/.
