(November 19, 2001) — She was named most valuable player for Glendale High School’s girls junior varsity soccer team two years ago. She’s played soccer since she was eight. Anna Camacho, who now plays on the GHS girls’ varsity soccer team, may seem like just another face in the crowd of Clark students, but the schedule she juggles shows that there is something different about her. Camacho stated that there are many reasons why she has chosen to play soccer for such a long time. She said she just likes it because it’s an active sport and she never gets bored. “There are always new tactics to games, and you have to use your brain while playing…it’s a smart sport. You can’t just go onto the field and expect to win by just kicking the ball.” Aside from playing for GHS, Camacho also coaches the Darling Dolphins, a young girls’ soccer team, part of the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO). She said she likes working with the girls partly because the competitive, often cutthroat, spirit of winning in high school soccer is absent with the Dolphins. Camacho said the girls are very easy going and that they’ll play wherever they want to. “There’s more flexibility coaching little kids, because they play for fun, ” Camacho stated. Two lessons she said she learned from coaching is “to take one day at a time” and that the children’s soccer atmosphere is very different from that of high school teams. When Camacho was younger, she said she was immediately attracted to the idea of this game. “ Before soccer, I had all these girlish activities going on. Soccer appealed to me” because it wasn’t one of those “girly” things to do, she said. Camacho was exposed to diverse activities since the age of four when she began swimming. She’s played piano since she was five, for about nine years. She also took ballet and tap lessons for three years, and the list goes on. Camacho has reason to pursue soccer, as she has been exposed to it much of her life. She said that her uncle was the interpreter at the Mens’ World Cup in 1994 while her cousins in Ecuador play soccer as much as they breathe. One of her cousins received a soccer scholarship from Pele, “the best soccer player ever,” commented Camacho. “I guess my liking of soccer may be a cultural thing. I’ve been exposed to it so much, I think it’s filtered into my blood.” While balancing coaching and competing, she still manages to participate in robotics at Clark. Because of robotics, said she hopes to pursue mechanical engineering as one of her majors in college.