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Two years ago, Westminster Christian School senior Fabiola Ibarra created a business that sold merchandise such as pants, bracelets, and bows with the Pinecrest Premier logo to raise money for the soccer club.
Ibarra has played for the club team for much of her life.
“We profited $10,000,” she says. “It covered a year and a half of expenses for our coaches.
As a team captain, it gave me a sense of pride.”
They ended the project when the Pinecrest Premier’s board decided to consolidate all the fundraising under their umbrella.
Ibarra also plays soccer for the Westminster team. She’s looking forward to the season because she believes that they have strong potential this year.
“Last year we made it to district semi-finals,” she says. “This year we are aiming for states, hopefully.”
Her Premier team has been conference champion since 2023, and she made the conference All-Star team in 2023.
Ibarra is a top player who has been contacted by colleges interested in having her play for them. However, she is inclined to focus on academics at a top tier school rather than play sports.
In addition to the community service project raising money for her soccer program, she has volunteered as a foster mom to puppies on two occasions. She finds the work rewarding although she admits giving them to new families is the hardest part of the job.
“I really love animals,” she says. “I did one last year and one this year. They were mutts. I kept the first one for a week and a half and the second one for two weeks. They got adopted.”
At school, she founded a chapter of the Lucy Foundation, a club dedicated to Lucy Fernandez, a Westminster student who died in a boating accident.
“Our goal is to teach about boater safety,” she says.
Ibarra has also helped start another club, called Women on Wall Street.
“I just got it approved,” she says. “It’s for people who are passionate about finance.
Hopefully, we can get businesswomen to come and mentor us. It’s to help close the gender gap.”
In college, she wants to major in Business, Finance or Marketing.
She’s applying to the University of Florida, Wake Forest University, Boston College, the University of Texas at Austin, Florida State University and the University of Miami.
On the way to her goal of going into business, she has taken internships, one at K.W. Property Management and Consulting.
“I shadowed the CFO and an accountant,” she says. “I was also part of a meeting. They manage condos and complexes.”
She also interned at Veridian.
“They are more accounting based,” she says. “I assisted in their daily tasks. It was mostly paperwork.”
Ibarra also did a marketing internship during her freshman year at Linden Prep, helping with social media.
Her community service includes organizing a self-defense workshop in April.
“I got a group of girls together and got an instructor,” she says. “Now that we are going to college we need to know some quick moves to defend ourselves.”
This past summer, Ibarra did a three-week semester abroad in Salamanca where she learned about language and culture.
“We went to three different cities,” she says. “Salamanca, Lisbon and Santiago.”
While there, she walked 14 miles of El Camino de Santiago, through towns and the woods.
The walk ended at a church.
“It was so nice,” she says. “I was skeptical about it. With everyone there, you didn’t feel it.
People go and do it and it’s like months. It’s like 300 miles. We did the end.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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