Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny – C.S. Lewis
For the second time in its football history, the Philippines reached the finals of an ASEAN competition courtesy of the Philippine Under-14 Women’s Football Team which competed in the recently concluded AFC U-14 Girls’ Regional Competition.
Unfortunately, though, the Pilipinas U-14 squad suffered a heartbreaking 0-1 defeat to Thailand in the championship game held last Sunday, June 5 at the Anouvong Stadium in Laos.
While the silver medal wasn’t what the coaches and players wanted to bring home after going that far in the competition, it was still a wonderful achievement to clinch nonetheless.
One standout player from the squad was midfielder Katelyn Alexander. Alexander was awarded player of the game twice and ended the tournaments with three goals, a couple of those goals coming against Thailand from an earlier encounter in the said tournament.
“It was all about hard work and teamwork. I mean we all had to come together and work as one to get that goal. So with that, I just want to say thank you to my teammates for helping me,” Alexander said.
Teamwork proved to be a recurring theme for Alexander. She explained that her journey started from the United States of America, where tryouts where held, was a “tough” phase.
“There was a lot of competition then we were selected out of fifty to go to the Philippines in order to tryout for the tryouts in order to be in the national team,” Alexander narrated. “After that I made the thirty with eight other Filipino-Americans and then we went to a thirty-day tryout which was quite hard with the experience of it. “
“Personally we had to fight through homesickness, losing our parents, fight with the food, and how much training we would do everyday.”
Those sacrifices Alexander and her teammates made weren’t for naught. Alexander stated her belief that the Pilipinas U-14 squad entered the competition fully ready. “The coaches showed us what to do which really helped and without that I don’t think any of us would be able to use the plays that we did, communicate with one another so it was very helpful,” she added.
The hard work and the patience bore fruit once the competition started. The Pilipinas U-14 squad remained undefeated on the way to the finals against Thailand.
Without a doubt, their best game occurred in the semifinals when they defeated Myanmar 5-1 with the scores level at 1-1 before the break.
Alexander said, “During halftime we had to get ready. We knew that we could win it against Myanmar.“
“We just had to mentally prepare ourselves and positively talk each other into winning this game because we knew that we needed to win to get to the finals. We just mentally prepared each other, just went out there to have fun and play.”
In the end, the success of Alexander and the rest of the Pilipinas U-14 squad should be a lesson for Philippine football’s stakeholders to keep on developing various grassroots programs. More successes in international youth competitions will bode well for the development of Philippine football.
If all goes well, then it shouldn’t be a surprise to see Alexander and her teammates play in the senior level in the next few years.
