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Gulliver Prep senior Julia Estrada is the Prep’s Silver Knight nominee in Athletics. Estrada plays soccer and lacrosse at Gulliver.
She’s been on the varsity soccer team for four years and is captain this year. Estrada started playing soccer when she was four years old. She is a strong player and has been an All Miami-Dade Honorable Mention her freshman and sophomore years, a member of the second team senior year, and the team’s MVP.
She also plays club soccer.
“I played for Miami Premier Soccer Club for nine years and Miami Breakers most recently,” she says.
Soccer has been such a big part of her life that she hopes to play the game in college, either at the university level or intermural.
“I don’t think I can go without the sport,” she says.
The Gulliver team made it to the district semi-finals this year.
“Our season was cut short by a really good game,” she says. “We lost 3-2. It was neck and neck the entire time. We almost made a comeback. We were a few minutes short. I think our team gave its all.”
This is Estrada’s third year playing lacrosse. She’s the goalie, so the team always has to wait for soccer season to end for her to join the team.
“My sophomore year we made school history by making it to district semifinals,” she says.
“First time in Gulliver girls’ lacrosse history.”
She hopes the team beats that record by making it to the regional semi-finals or further when this lacrosse season goes to the playoffs.
She also has a strong emphasis on community service. She has earned more than 900 community service hours and hopes to top 1000 before the end of the year. Her Silver Knight project involves music, which she is passionate about.
In middle school, she played violin in the Arvida School Orchestra.
“Their music program was pretty big at the time,” she says. “I played violin at the orchestra there. I played for the advanced level orchestra, the highest class offered at Arvida. I decided to create a music library, refiling 15 years’ worth of music sheets in a new user-friendly system.”
She painted all the walls, brought in all new equipment for teachers and students.
“I wanted to create a more pleasant environment for the students where they can be encouraged to learn, create and practice music” she says.
To create the filing systems Estrada solicited donations from Ikea, Home Depot and Office Depot for organizational items.
“It took me about a year to do it. Just seeing my previous classmates and the music directors’ faces, it was great,” she says.
She’s currently working on completing her Gold Award Project.
“I am collaborating with Breakthrough Miami,” she says. “I want to implement a music elective where I teach the students the benefits of music in everyday life.”
She hopes to get it started this year.
“I’ve already found a donor for some instruments and I’m building lesson plans,” she says.
Estrada is a member of six honor societies, including Psi Alpha. Rho Kappa, Tri-M, the English Honor Society, the National Honor Society, and the French Honor Society.
She is also a member of Get Out And Love Soccer (GOALS), a club that invites students in the autism spectrum to the campus to play sports.
So far Estrada has been accepted to the architecture program at the Rochester Institute of Technology and Clemson University. She’s still waiting to hear from the University of Cornell, Notre Dame, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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