Sydney Leroux carves own path, going from child troublemaker to U.S. star

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Sydney Leroux, 13, had a bleached blond Mohawk. She had tattoos. And club coach Les Armstrong, who was there to scout her for his Sereno Soccer Club team, took one look at her and thought, Oh my G*d, this girl is nuts.

She was also exceptionally talentedher speed and strength unrivaled by any other player on the field. She exuded equal parts defiance and want, and Armstrong thought she had what it took to play for the U.S. national team.

Growing up, I was wild, thats really the best way to put it, says Leroux. From Day One, I had to be doing something, pushing buttons.

She was born in Surrey, British Colombia, Canada. When she was 3, she scaled the 15-foot fence surrounding the baseball diamond where her mother, Sandiformer member of the Canadian national softball teamwas playing in a game; Leroux, dangling in the air, waved to her mother. My heart stopped, Sandi says.

By the time she started school, everyday shed find herself in the principals office.

I was a pretty bad kid, says Leroux. I would get up when I was supposed to be sitting down. I was in my own world and no one could be a part of that but me. Recess would end, everyone else would come in, but in my head, it wasnt time for me to come in yet. Id still be out there kicking the ball.

After discovering she was reward-driven, Lerouxs mom and teachers devised a star system: if she was good all day, she got a gold star; enough gold stars earned her a sleepover with a friend.

If I didnt get a star, Id be p****d," Leroux said. "Id try to be so good and then Id do like one thingsmush a peanut butter and jelly in the math bookand I wouldnt get a star and Id have to come home to my mom and try to explain."

From first through sixth grade, on the behavior report cards sent home with her, Leroux would white out the teachers grade and replace it with a good grade.

It would be obvious, childish handwriting. But Id give it to my mom, totally thinking I was slick, says Leroux.

When a teacher would call homethis morning Sydney refused to come inside from recessLeroux, who got home before her mother, would just erase the voicemails.

By 13, shed steal her moms car: She had a key ring with like 50 keys, so I would slide the keys off the counter with a towel so she couldnt hear the jingling.

They lived on a hill, so shed put the car in neutral, roll it down the incline, and go pick up her best friend, Efrosini (Fro). We had nowhere to go, wed just drive around, go to McDonalds, go out on the beach, says Leroux.

Theyd sit in the sand and talk about their lives, their dreams, their fantasiesa lot of which have now come true.

Photo: Courtesy of Sydney Leroux

Sydney Leroux and her mother, Sandi.

Leroux always knew that the United States was considered the best womens soccer team in the world.

Growing up, it was a thing, it was just something that you knew if you played soccer, says Leroux. With her mom, she watched the 1999 Womens World Cup. On the U.S. team, there were all these big names. And I was like, I want to be that person. I want to be known for being a soccer player and doing something that I love.

She also knew she had the chance to play for the U.S. Her father, Ray Chadwick, a minor league baseball player who left her mother when she was two months pregnant, was an American.

He wasnt on her birth certificate, so she didnt have automatic dual citizenship, but she and her mother knew that if she could get him to sign the papers, shed have the chance to play for the U.S.

Lerouxs mom, who worked graveyard shifts at the grocery store so that she could go to her daughters games, believed in her Sydney"s dream. What made Leroux a handful to raisethat irrepressible urge to experiment, to defy, to take risksis part of what made her special on the field.

She had the audacity of a goal-scorer. At the U-14 Canadian national championships, Leroux said to her mother, Hey mom, if I score 10 goals, can I get a tattoo? Thinking there was no way she could do it, Sandi said, Yeah Syd, sure Syd. Twelve goals later, Syd was in the tattoo parlora giant soccer ball emblazoned in flames getting inked into her backand Sandi was more aware than ever that she had a daughter who could make things happen.

Sandi knew it was time to get her daughter out of Canada. If Sydney wanted to play for the United States, she needed to play in front of American coaches.

Leroux landed first with a club in Seattle. She was 13. She was homesick, she missed her mom, and she was playing defense. She felt out of place on the field, she felt out of place off of itwhich is where the mohawk comes in. She cut her hair off, shaved the sides, dyed the tips blond. I figured I didnt fit in anywhere anyways. Why not? she says.

While Sandi could do nothing about the tattoos that would emerge over the next few years, the first time her eyes landed on her daughters mohawk, she marched her straight to the hairdresser and got it all cut off. Then I had this ugly haircut for the longest time, says Leroux. Pretty much since then I havent cut my hair.

Her mom got the contact of another American coach with a reputation for developing players, and thats how Leroux eventually arrived in Armstrongs kitchen, in Scottsdale, Arizona, eating dinner with him and his wife. Sitting across the table from her, it was pretty easy to see she was no hellion, just a scared kid, trying to be brave.

Staying at the coachs house, knowing nobody, not knowing where you were going to live, your whole life packed up in bagsshe must have been terrified, says Armstrong.

Armstrong found a family for Leroux to stay withthe first of many. That first home may have been the hardest: she remembers starting to eat dinner before she had prayed.

They looked at me like I was the devil," she says. "Im a very open, spiritual person but this family lived by the book and Id never grown up like that. They made me feel like something was wrong with me. Its funny now but it wasnt funny then.

The second house, the third house, the fourth, none of them worked. It wasnt behavioral problems, she was a diligent little solider. She was friendly and kind and she did well in school, says Armstrong. "Its just hard to fit into someone elses family."

It was also hard to fit into a new social world.

15-year-old girls are mean, says Leroux. Everyone has their group of friends, they dont take into account how you make people feel. I was an outsider, an outcast.

Leroux was depressed. She slept a lot and she called her mom two to three times a day, crying, begging to go home.

In Arizona, I lost the best part of me, which is my sense of humor, and my ability to make fun of myself, says Leroux. I just didnt have it anymore.

But she still had the field: Soccer is what saved me," she says.

Leroux buried herself in the game. Shed train with her own age group boys team, then shed train with the older boys, then the older girls. sometimes going to three practices a day.

Always, she left an impression: In her very first practice with Sereno, she did a flying bicycle kick that Armstrong says h**l remember for the rest of his life. Another time she came out to the field with her shirt half-way raised, cream slathered all over stomach, yelling at Armstrong to check out her new tattoo. (I was like, Holy h**l. Never show me anything like that again.) At Armstrongs older boys practices, shed knock the c**p out of themone of the guys would be laying on the ground, everybody would be laughing, and Syd would ask, Did I do something wrong?

The triple-practices, the thousands of miles away from home, the feeling of being absolutely aloneit started paying off. In 2008, after getting her father to sign the documents, Leroux found herself in Santiago, Chile, playing for the U.S. at the U-20 Women"s World Cup. She won the Golden Ball and would go on to become the all-time leading scorer for the U-20 team.

Off the field, things also got better: she eventually landed with the Wall familythe family that fit. It was the first house Leroux bothered to move into. She had her own room, she taped pictures up on the wall, and Dana Wall, her teammate, felt like a sister.

Colleges came to recruit herincluding Jill Ellis, then coach of UCLA, and now coach of the U.S. national team.

Ellis knew what Leroux had to offer and did whatever it took to get her, including going to get manicures on a recruiting trip.

(When asked whose idea that was, Leroux laughs, Well I certainly dont see it being hers.)

After Leroux spent one night on the UCLA campus, she told Ellis she was committing to Santa Clara. Elliss face dropped, and Leroux grinned: Just kidding.

And thats how she knew she was going to have a lot on her hands, laughs Leroux.

Leroux, true to form, kept things interesting: Freshman year she got herself a dog named Boss, dorm policy be damned. She got kicked out of campus housing. (So Boss and I moved out.) Just as she always had, Leroux did things her own way. She finished her college career with 57 goals, 23 of them game-winners.

Fast-forward to today: The flaming soccer ball is covered with other tattoos (I mean, I love soccer, but no need for a giant flaming ball on my back); all pictorial evidence of a mohawk was long ago deleted; and Lerouxs hair has grown out, long braids bouncing down her back as U.S. fans watch her run at goal.

She is still the firecracker on and off the field. In her second cap with the senior national team, in an Olympic qualifying match against Guatemala, she scored five goals, tying the record for goals scored in a match. In 2012, she set the record for most goals off the bench (12). And even though she has not been a consistent starter for the team, she is still a mega-star: About 250,000 follow her on Twitter as she speaks her mind about turf, among other things,and makes jokesher profile reads: I kick b***s for a living.

This Valentines Day, a date chosen based on jersey numbersLeroux, No. 2, and Sporting Kansas City forward Dom Dwyer, No. 14, announced via social media that theyd gotten married in a private ceremony. Dwyer, like Leroux, is a transplantborn in England, he attended college stateside, established residency in 2009, and could become eligible to play for the U.S., like his wife. In one photo posted on Twitter, the couple is holding hands, wearing their respective jerseys, backs to the camera DWYER written across both sets of shoulders.

But on the field, she is still very much Leroux. Shes on the cover ofSports Illustrated, finger to her lips, next to the caption: Sydney Leroux hears your boos Canada, Sydney Leroux will silence your boos Canada. A previous time she played in front of Canada for the U.S., 20,000 fans were booing herangry that she wasnt playing for them. On June 8, facing off against Australia in Winnipeg, she will once again be on Canadian soil, playing for the United States realizing the dream she had as a kid.

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Gwendolyn Oxenham is the author ofFinding the Game: Three Years, Twenty-Five Countries, and the Search for Pickup Soccerand the co-director ofPelada. Her website isgwendolynoxenham.comand she can be followed on Twitter@gwenoxenham.

Source: http://www.si.com/planet-futbol/2015/06/08/sydney-leroux-uswnt-womens-world-cup