Paige Johnson commits to Twin Cities Fire Soccer Club
January 12, 2016
She comes from a family who breathes, sweats and bleeds athletics. Junior Paige Johnson started off at a young age playing VAA soccer with her dad as her coach. From that point on, she decided she wanted to play club soccer and eventually make a career or hobby of it. She recently has committed to the season of 2015-2016 Twin Cities Fire Soccer Club, which is a traveling soccer team for the Twin Cities. Her parents are her biggest supporters as well as her past soccer coaches. She has spent every summer and school year as long as she could remember playing soccer for clubs, doing soccer camps, and playing school soccer. This past summer Johnson has even coached at a summer camp. Johnson not only plays soccer non-stop but she takes three Advanced Placement classes and has a part time job. When Johnson is not working, in school, or with friends and family, she is typically out playing soccer or practicing.
Johnson spent days considering taking a position playing for Twin Cities Fire, with huge amounts of stress and anxiety that came along with the decision to be apart of the team she ended up taking the offer.
“To be honest, I didn’t want to play for them [Twin Cities Fire] at all. I thought it would be way too much stress and I would have absolutely no social life with my friends which is much more important to me than soccer. I think playing for Fire really shows my commitment because I have to wake up at 6 [in the morning] every Saturday, sometimes earlier to drive to soccer practice,” Johnson said. “I think the only reason I ended up joining the team was because I haven’t ever had a chance like this and my friends and family were all so supportive through the decision making process. Everyone in my life wanted to me chase after what I love the most.”
Johnson plans to play soccer for college and hopes to get a scholarship, which is another reason she chose to join the Fire soccer club. She thought it would be a good way to get scouted out for colleges. Her only fear of playing for a college is getting injured, recently tearing a ligament in her ankle, leaving her off the field and exempt from running for nearly half the season. She could not imagine getting injured again and going months if not years without playing soccer.
“Soccer is kind of my escape from reality, when I’m on the field nothing else matters to me. I play mid-field which involves a lot of running and being able to run relieves so much stress for me. When I injured my ankle I was distraught, not being able to go on runs and watch my soccer team practice and play games without me was so hard for me. That’s the main reason I am also scared to play for college; more competition, more injuries. Just this year alone scares me, so many people have injured themselves playing sports. Seeing girls on my team [Junior Varsity] or the Varsity team tearing their ACL or injuring themselves any other way, I don’t want that to be me,” Johnson said.
Johnson has played for many different clubs including VAA, St. Criox, Mahtomedi and currently Fire. She has a huge advantage from playing on all those teams, one being her relationship with her former coach, Greg Karp.
Karp, coach of girls’ Mahtomedi soccer and former coach of Johnson said, “Paige is very coach-able and anything you tell her to do, she will go out on the field and do it. She’s determined and a good teammate, these are all qualities coaches look for when evaluating players so I knew she needed something different than Mahtomedi.”
Besides Karp, Johnson’s parents Beth Johnson and Bill Johnson are what keep her willpower so strong. Her mom and dad support her and push her to do her best in school and to play soccer while she can. Beth said, “she is running out of time to play the sport she loves the most if she doesn’t play in college.”
Bill said, “Paige deserves this so much and I am not just saying that. She has worked hard for the past few years to make a good club team or to make the school Varsity team. I have noticed whenever I go to Paige’s practices or soccer games she is among the few girls who do not complain when they have to do drills or conditioning. She does what she is told with no complaining.”
