This year’s varsity girls soccer team has recently lost one of their senior players. Senior Julia Kristensen broke her ankle at a home game against Fort Zumwalt South. This came as a shock to many of the other girls on the team.

“I think it sucks,” varsity senior Ella Pardo said. “I’ve never broken a bone. I can’t imagine how it would be missing your senior season.”

Kristensen was going for a corner kick and reached for the ball, when something went wrong and she ended up snapping her fibula with three minutes left in the game. Her coaches and the trainer came out to examine her ankle on the field, and then she was taken to the emergency room by her mom.

“I just kept thinking there’s no way it broke,” Kristensen said. “All I heard was a pop so I thought it was just normally popping.”

Kristensen has been playing soccer since she was four, and she originally joined because both of her parents played. Over the 14 years that she has played, she has grown to love the sport. She has played for both club and school teams, and she’s been on varsity for all four years of her high school career.

“I just love the competition; it’s what I’ve done forever so it’s a part of me,” Kristensen said. “Soccer is like my escape from everything, there’s nothing quite like playing soccer and it’s been my rock throughout my entire life.”

After the spring soccer season and once Julia fully recovers from her injury, she plans to return to soccer and play club soccer over the summer. Kristensen also recently signed to play D1 soccer at the University of Central Missouri, which she will be doing after this school year. According to head girls varsity soccer coach Mark Olwig, Kristensen has really shined as a player and leader with the FHN girls soccer program and Olwig is very confident in Kristensen doing really well at the college level.

“Julia’s best part is probably just her passion and intensity,” Olwig said. “She has the skill and the talent, but just the way she plays 110%. She wants to succeed, she wants the team to succeed, so that’s probably the biggest. I think she’ll be really good at the next level. She’s talented, knows the game, I think she can play multiple positions which is always a benefit for the team needs, I think she’ll do really well at the collegiate level.”