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Cecilia Escobio is the Westminster Christian School Silver Knight nominee for General Scholarship. Her Silver Knight project revolves around a soccer academy in Uganda.
“It’s an orphanage,” she says. “It is faith based. They prioritize education the most. They teach Christianity and it ties into everything that they do.”
Along with collecting gently used soccer equipment, Escobio organizes fundraisers to raise the money needed to ship the containers of gently used soccer equipment.
Her old coaches from her club team, Pinecrest Primer soccer, connected her with the academy. The club team recently switched practice uniforms.
“We tried to collect all the jerseys and all the old equipment, and we are working on shipping it over there,” she says. “The sending over is complicated.”
Most of the sports equipment comes from members of the club teams.
“I usually do it through the club,” she says. “I contact the directors and they do more of that side. There is a girl’s director and a boy’s director, and I tell them and they help me out.”
Escobio plays soccer for both Premier Soccer and the Westminster team. She’s captain of both teams. Last year she was named to the Miami Herald’s All-Dade Second Team.
The high school team’s regular season ends toward the end of January. If the team makes it through the district tournament and the regional championships and to the State Championships, they could play through early March.
“I’m pretty confident we can make it through regionals and maybe states,” she says.
Escobio works at Big Potential Training, an all-female youth clinic program. They recently hosted a Thanksgiving clinic and usually have summer clinics at Ron Ehmann Park. She’s the only high school aged coach. She says she loves working with the children.
“I usually get the youngest to work with,” she says. “I work with the six- and seven-year-olds. I love it. They’re adorable. You can see how they are developing.”
Coaching the younger players requires her to think back to when she was their age and helps her with her fundamentals.
“It makes you realize how important everything is,” she says.
At Westminster, she’s in the Emerald Scholars Program in the Capstone Track. Her Capstone research paper studied athletic burnout in youth sports.
“I was seeing if it (burnout) was based on the level of commitment,” she says.
She concluded that the level of commitment did NOT factor into burnout.
“I did a survey on level of commitment,” she says. “The other factors were more important than how much you were doing.”
Escobio finished her college application process during the holiday break. The application list includes the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, the University of Florida, Vanderbilt, and Norte Dame. She plans to major in finance.
At school Escobio is a member of the National Honor Society, the National English Honor Society, the National World Languages Honor Society, the Science National Honor Society, My Alpha Theta and Rho Kappa.
She’s the vice president of Women on Wall Street, a club about business.
“It’s like DECA without the competitions and only for girls,” she says.
She’s an officer in DECA, the business-oriented club.
This past summer she spent three weeks at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in a program called Leadership in the Business World.
“We focused on case studies,” she says. “They would put us on a team. You’d choose a company or a merger, and you’d have to make a business plan. We built a business plan and pitched it to the entire program.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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