Chasing Our Dream

Hey there everyone, we’re Samm and Drew Swanson. Some of you know us personally and some of you we have not had the opportunity to meet yet. We wanted to take a little time to tell all of you a bit more about us and what we are up to regarding our pursuit of our HUGE Soccer Dream. We’ll tell the whole story in the following paragraphs, but first a quick summary of what is currently going on.

We just finished our first year of Varsity High School Soccer and had a great time. Right about the same time we officially made the varsity team, we were recruited to a new Competitive Soccer Club, USA STARS. We simultaneously started training with the High School Varsity Team and the STARS early in 2016. Our High School season ended with our team making the playoffs for the first time in 10 years! Once summer hit, we started playing in our first tournaments with our new club the STARS. We won 4 out of 5 Tournaments this summer and learned a ton. We’ve never had the opportunity before to play this much soccer nor to be able to play soccer at such a highly competitive level. Our club team was ranked #4 in the United States mid-summer. As of the last week of August, we are now ranked #2 in the country! It’s honestly hard for us to believe that we’re ranked that high, but it’s for real. Our STARS team qualified for the US Youth Soccer National League for 2016/17. This is HUGE news! We’ll explain in more detail in a bit….the point is we’re finding ourselves blessed beyond belief to play at this level of competition with this type of National Exposure. Our team is already being looked at by Division 1 College Soccer programs. Our dream is starting to happen and it’s amazing!

Before we go any further, we want to communicate to everyone that we are going to be asking for help. We need two main types of support. We need financial help and we need fans cheering us on. Both types of support are invaluable. First, we are putting in a tremendous amount of work to accomplish our dream of playing soccer in college and beyond. All the trainings, practices, weight training, tournaments as well as maintaining high GPA in High School is tiring at times. Some days everything is going great….but to be honest, some days we get a little discouraged when we’re sore, tired, or when we’re struggling with something in one of our classes or struggling with our soccer skills we are working so hard to develop. We need your support to help us stay encouraged. Second, there’s a lot of expenses to play at this level. For example, we have to travel as a team to North Carolina this Dec 1st for the US Youth National League. WOW!!! That’s going to be awesome, but we have to raise support to make it possible. Grandpa opened a savings account for us specifically for our Soccer needs for the next 3 years and any donations made go directly into that account.

We will be competing for a National Championship this year, and it really is possible for us to win it!

This coming year of soccer and school is going to be an amazing journey and our dream is starting to become reality. We would like to share our experiences along the way with you through our stories, soccer updates, photos, videos, sharing the good days and the days of struggle, and along the way we covet and so very much appreciate all your support!!!

Please read "Our Dream, Our Story" in which we share when, where, how the dream began and Our Story of soccer leading to this amazing opportunity in our lives. Copy and paste the following link in your web browser to be taken to Our Story.

http://supersammalama.wixsite.com/mysite/our-dream-our-story