One of the signatures of Carolina Ascent midfielder Ashlynn Serepca’s game is her physicality and how strong she is with the ball.
As a middle schooler, she earned the nickname “Smash” – much to the delight of her father David, then the defensive coordinator for the Davidson Day High School football team.
“I think the football field for me just really ties back to the relationship between me and my dad,” Ashlynn tells Channel 9′s Phil Orban.
It became clear early on that Ashlynn was a future star on the soccer field, so it was up to her father to get the most out of her talent, knowing the least about her sport.
“I wish I would have known enough about YouTube to be able to pull up soccer videos,” David says. “Since I didn’t know anything, I figured well – we’ll get some football pads.”
So, David and his son Joel would run Ashlynn through soccer drills, shoving her like a defensive back would on the football field and even throwing pads at her as she dribbled through cones.
“It was a mix between fun but also me getting frustrated,” Ashlynn says. “I think it’s a big part of my game, the strength, so when the football pads were out, it always reminds me about that physicality that I would bring.”
But it was her strong right leg that made her special. Ashlynn’s father and head coach Chad Grier didn’t know much about kicking, so they asked Ashlynn – then in middle school – to work with a kid trying out.
As she was helping him kick an extra point, Ashlynn says the other boys on the team started to ask her to show them how far she could kick.
So, she did, from 40 yards out – barefoot.
“I don’t think I thought any of them were watching and all of a sudden they went over screaming and cheering, like, no way a girl just did that barefoot,” Ashlynn says.
“That was the last we saw of that guy,” David says of the boy Ashlynn was helping at the time. “He said, ‘I’m not going to play if she can kick it barefoot from 40.’ I don’t know what happened to him. We never saw him again.”
But Ashlynn was a fixture. Time on the football field was special for her and shaped her into the player, and person, she is now.
“What I love to do is compete and I’ve been able to see my dad, as a coach and father figure, be able to just compete and show his passion. And I think that’s something that has always just sparked a desire in me,” Ashlynn says.
All of the Ascent’s road games will air on TV64 this season.
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