I was not always into soccer. My first passion as a child was dancing and I was really good at it. That slowly changed when my siblings began playing soccer. As the annoying middle child, I did not like being left out, and so I gave it a shot. My family was never the biggest fans of soccer, but it soon became our lives. Throughout the years of playing, my family became my biggest supporter.
They made many sacrifices ensuring that each of us would always attend training and games; which was a lot considering that I, alone, trained 5-6 times a week. This lifestyle did not come without a cost, as growing up in Barrie meant a lot of driving. Whether it be practice, games, or tryouts, my mom and dad had their fair share of long drives for my siblings and I. Games were often at least a two hour drive away and took up all our weekends.
I will always be grateful for my family and for the way I was brought up. Both my parents are flight attendants which made me discover a passion for traveling at a really young age. One of my favorite trips I took was to England in grade 10 for soccer. I got selected at an ID camp to go overseas and train with Stoke City. We got to attend 2 professional games, which was interesting to see the difference with the sport in North America and Europe. It was so fun and I learned a lot. There were only 2 girls in the camp, so we practiced with the boys often, which encouraged us to push ourselves to our max and prove our strengths.
Timeline of Soccer Career
I was part of the Barrie soccer club from grades 3 to 7, where I learned to love the sport and developed my skills. The second year at the club, I got cut from the A team and was placed in the B team. After a year of improvement I successfully made my way back to team A, and continued playing there until I switched clubs in grade 9.
I then decided to transfer to a new club, PSI, opened by a previous technical director at the Barrie soccer club,d. Since I liked the new owner a great deal, I, along with 5 other girls, joined him. This club is where I developed and improved the most in the sport and as a person.
“I improved the most here because I was forced out of my comfort zone.”
Océane LaVia
There were very few girls my age in the club as it was a brand new academy, so I played and trained with girls much older than me. When I started grade 10, I was surprised to see that I was on par with the rest of the league. My self esteem and confidence flourished and the next thing you knew, I started to take on players 1v1 instead of constantly playing it safe.
For my grade 11 year, I once again switched clubs. This time I went to a new club called Vaughan SC. Sadly, and I won’t lie, this year was the most challenging. I showed up to the try outs and the coach clearly wanted me to join the team, but before the season started our coach switched to the boys team and was replaced by a new coach. That year I struggled a lot with my mental health, and soccer, which had previously been an escape, was now adding to the problem. Unfortunately this caused me to regress and I started to not play as well as I used to; my confidence was at an all time low. I had always dreamt of playing soccer for my university, and grade 11 is often the time that scouting begins in Canada. As you could imagine since I was playing poorly, I was not on the roster often. This made it extremely difficult to ask scouts to come watch me, as I wouldn’t know if I was playing until the night before. Despite all this, I never gave up. In grade 12, I then made the decision to return to the Barrie soccer club, and with the help of my previous coach at PSI, I was able to get a tryout with the Laurentian Women’s Soccer Team. I got extremely lucky to sign with the team after a single practice right before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Signing with Laurentian has been a great opportunity, and I am beyond happy to have ended up on this team. Despite the love I have for this team, my time here has not been the easiest; in my first year covid cancelled our season. I decided to still move up on campus in hopes of getting some training in, however, there were few of us and covid regulations were constantly changing. This frustrated me to no end.
Second year was thankfully much better. I was quite grateful for this season. I started and played the full 90 minutes of the 9 out of 10 games we had. Unfortunately, covid still had a lingering impact on this season, therefore we never had preseason and they limited the number of games we played, but playing the sport again felt amazing.
Injury
During the summer in between my second and third year I continued playing soccer with a summer league, where I unfortunately injured myself in the last minute of the game. I didn’t know how serious it was at first, I just hoped it would heal fast. Originally, my physio believed it to be a torn meniscus, however, after receiving my MRI results, they concluded that I had torn my ACL, MCL in addition to the meniscus.
I got extremely lucky, and gratefully underwent my surgery faster than the average person even gets an MRI appointment. The first two weeks after my surgery were hell, but with rehab, slowly I was able to do more and more. It has been 6 months now since the surgery and the progress is going well. The doctors believe I will be out for a maximum of 9 months, but I am determined with my strength and will power to come back sooner than ever.
Austria Exchange
My love of traveling never went away. I have always wanted to see the world like my parents were able to. In second year, I discovered the exchange program opportunity at Laurentian and right away I wanted to be part of it. Covid set me back a few steps, but with persistence I got all my papers done and was approved to go. I have already found a team that I will be practicing with when my knee is fully healed. I am so excited to travel through Austria and learn about the country and its culture, all while studying and playing soccer preparing myself for my last season as a voyageurs. This opportunity is once in a lifetime and I’m eternally grateful for it.
SPAD Players Tribune 