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Miami Palmetto High School senior Sami (Anes) Lipcon is going to the University of Central Florida to play soccer. She signed her letter of intent on November 8.
“It was national signing day,” she says. “I verbally committed junior year.”
Her major will be sports medicine.
She’s a goalie and when she played high school soccer, she made the All Miami-Dade team. While she no longer plays high school soccer, she does play club soccer for Florida United in Davie.
“It’s part of Girls Academy – it’s like a league throughout the country,” she says. “It’s a high up academy. It helps you get into Division I soccer.”
Lipcon started playing soccer when she was three.
“I would follow whatever my brother did,” she says. “When my brother went into soccer, I went into soccer. The only thing I didn’t follow him was quitting soccer, I kept going.”
Lipcon plays safety and receiver on the girl’s flag football team for Palmetto. Flag football is a fairly new school sport, The team won the GMAC championship. District playoffs begin in mid-April.
She’s a point guard on the girls’ basketball team.
The team had a good year, making it to the district finals and advancing to regional where they lost in the regional quarter finals. Lipcon was recognized as one of the top twenty basketball players in Miami-Dade.
Her club team is nearing the end of the season. They don’t have playoffs. Instead, they participate in showcases that college scouts attend.
When she’s not playing sports or studying, Lipcon trains girls on how to be a goalie. She trains them at Evelyn Greer Park.
“I work with the kids one-on-one,” she says. “I teach seven- to eight-year-olds now. I usually start with the basics and teach them to catch the proper way. I go to diving and teach them the proper way to dive.”
She says it’s easier to dive to the ball.
“You dive more forward so you can meet the ball instead of diving backwards into the goal,” she says.
She also volunteers to help Down Syndrome kids play soccer, too. It’s through Pinecrest Premier.
She did it every other weekend when she was off from her sports commitments. She travels a lot with her club team.
At Palmetto, she’s in the National Honor Society. She tries to donate to the various drives conducted through the NHS including hygiene drives or clothes donations.
Lipcon would love to have a future in professional soccer and try out for the Olympic team.
But first, she has to earn her spot on the UCF team. She says the team’s philosophy is that if you work hard enough at practice, you play.
“It all depends on how hard I work whether I deserve a starting spot,” she says.
For a future in soccer after college, she says she’ll have to keep on training and continue to work hard.
Even now she practices or plays soccer four or five days a week. She also works out in the gym in the mornings before school two days a week.
Despite her concentration on sports, academics come first. She studies in the car on her way to the club soccer practice and she will go home early sometimes to do homework. She has learned time management skills.
“My organization keeps everything in check,” she says. “I have my agenda book and phone calendar.”
Her advice for anyone who wants to succeed in sports:
“Dreams do come true and if you want to play in college, work for it and keep working,” she says.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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