Caitlin’s shooting for the soccer stars

MEET Caitlin Foord – a budding sport star you will probably be reading a lot in the future.

Pint-sized Caitlin, from Lake South, had a mammoth 2007 in many sporting codes.

On the football pitch, Caitlin made the NSW Combined High Schools (CHS) open girls football team, the South Coast open team, was the highest goal scorer for the Illawarra Stingrays and was named in select XI after representing NSW Metro in the Friendship Games.

In futsal Caitlin was selected in the NSW under 13s to play in the Australian Championships in Canberra in the New Year; in the meantime she is playing for the Hawkesbury Commodores in the NSW Premier League.

Next year Caitlin will be a member of the Wollongong Devils under 14s touch team for the State Cup after earlier this year making the NSW CHS cross-country championships.

The year seven student was named Illawarra Sports High’s Junior (years 7-9) sportsperson of 2008 and was one of 32 players from across NSW to receive a $500 scholarship from McDonalds.

Despite such achievement across a variety of codes, football is the 13-year-old’s passion, her mother, Simone Foord, said.

“Soccer takes up most of our time but Caitlin is starting to get right into futsal,” Simone said.

Making the NSW CHS open shadow team, playing against students as old as year 12, was the highlight of 2007 Simone said.

“That was huge for a kid in year seven; she handled it quite well,” Simone said.

Caitlin played for the Stingrays for the past two seasons but signed with Sutherland after the local club was relegated from the NSW Premier League.

Caitlin’s ultimate goal is to play for the Matildas.

On Mondays she plays touch in Wollongong, Tuesday and Thursday she is at the Johnny Warren Soccer Academy and Wednesday she trains in Sutherland, Simone said.