Learning soccer as a young soccer girl is an amazing journey full of rewards that go way beyond just playing a sport. From your very first kick to your best goal ever, each step helps you grow not just as a soccer player but as a person. While learning any sport can be hard sometimes, soccer makes all the tough practices and missed shots totally worth it.
For girls, especially, soccer offers special benefits as women’s sports keep getting more popular and respected. Whether you’re just starting in soccer or have been playing for years, thinking about these soccer rewards can help you stay excited even when soccer feels challenging.
8 Most Rewarding Parts of Learning Soccer as a Girl
Here are the most rewarding parts of learning soccer for young females.
1. Build Confidence
One of the most rewarding parts of learning soccer, which happens when you learn soccer as a girl, is how much more confident you become. There’s something really powerful about learning a new skill, especially in soccer. The first time you dribble past someone, make a perfect pass or score a goal, you realize: “I can do this!”
This confidence doesn’t just help you in soccer. When things get hard at school or with friends, you can remember how you kept trying at soccer even when it was difficult. The voice in your head says, “If I could learn that tricky soccer move or play through that tough game, I can handle this too.”
Finding Your Voice
Many girls say soccer helped them speak up more and believe in themselves. Listen to even the professional female soccer players talk about the same. How did they learn to find their force, or how will you?
In soccer, you need to call for the ball, talk to your teammates, and sometimes stand strong against opponents. These experiences teach you to use your voice, take up space, and trust your abilities. These are the kinds of things that help girls everywhere in life.
Positive Changes Parents Notice
Parents often notice their daughters changing. A girl who used to be shy might start raising her hand more in class or trying new things. Soccer gives you a safe place to take chances, make mistakes, and learn that failing isn’t the end of the world. It’s just part of learning.
2. Make Best Friends
The soccer field is where many girls find their best friends. Teammates become so much more than just the other players wearing the same color jersey. There’s something special about the friendships you make through practicing together, winning together, losing together, and just having fun playing.
These friendships are different from other ones. You see your teammates when they’re super happy and when they’re having a hard time. These include celebrating awesome plays, working through frustration, and helping each other after mistakes. You learn to trust each other, count on each other, and push each other to get better.
Many women who played soccer as girls say their soccer friends are still their closest friends many years later.
Even better, you get a life partner. Some of the famous gay female football players are or were teammates.
Joining a Bigger Community
Besides making friends being the most rewarding part of learning soccer, being part of soccer connects you to even more people than just your team. As you play in different women’s soccer leagues or tournaments, you join a bigger group of female players who love the same sport. This community can help you, guide you, and connect you throughout your life, whether you keep playing or do other things later.
A Second Family
For many girls, their soccer team feels like a second family—a place where they feel completely understood and accepted. In a world where girls sometimes feel pressure to compete against each other in mean ways, soccer teams show how girls can compete together, supporting each other instead of putting each other down.
3. Stay Healthy and Active
Among other rewarding parts of learning soccer as a girl is that it helps you stay healthy and active.
Fun Fitness
Soccer is one of the best ways to be healthy and fit. It gives your whole body a workout that makes your heart, lungs, muscles, coordination, and flexibility better. Unlike some exercises that feel boring, soccer makes fitness fun. You’re so focused on the game that you don’t even notice you’re running for miles.
Soccer Benefits That Last
The physical soccer benefits start right away and can last your whole life. Young female soccer players develop stronger hearts and lungs, build muscles, improve balance, and create healthy habits that can continue when they grow up. Soccer players often develop super strong legs, stomach muscles, and heart and lung strength that help them stay healthy.
Mental Health Boost
Soccer also helps your mental health. The good feelings your brain releases during exercise can reduce stress and make you feel happier. Many female soccer babes describe soccer as their “happy place”—where worries about school or other things temporarily go away as they focus completely on the game.
Stay Active for Life
For girls, who sometimes stop playing sports more often than boys do as they get older, finding an exercise they truly love can change their lives. Women who play soccer often stay more active throughout their lives, which helps them be healthier and happier overall.
4. Learn to Be Responsible
Learning to be responsible is among the most rewarding parts of learning soccer as a girl. These responsibilities include;
Commitment and Organization
Soccer requires commitment. To practice schedules, game times, and team rules, and get better. This naturally teaches important lessons about responsibility that help you in many areas of life, as a female soccer babe.
Managing Your Time
As a young soccer girl player, you learn to manage your time well, balancing soccer with homework, family responsibilities, and other activities. You’ll discover the importance of being prepared. Having your gear ready, arriving on time, and taking care of your body by eating well, drinking enough water, and getting enough rest.
Building Consistency
The structure that soccer provides can be really helpful during the teenage years when having positive activities and clear expectations help guide growth. As a young female soccer player, you’ll learn that consistent effort over time leads to improvement—an important life lesson that applies to school, future jobs, and personal goals.
Learning About Priorities
Soccer also teaches important lessons about priorities and sometimes giving things up. Sometimes as a soccer girl player, you need to miss hanging out with friends for games or practices, wake up early on weekends for tournaments, or spend time practicing instead of relaxing. These small sacrifices build character and help you understand that achieving important things often means giving up some fun in the short term for bigger rewards later.
Developing Independence
If you’re a parent, you’ll often notice that your soccer-playing daughters develop strong organizational skills and self-discipline that help in other areas, too. The player who learns to pack her own bag, remember her water bottle, and take responsibility for being ready to play is developing independence that will help her throughout life.
5. Break Barriers and Inspire Others
Breaking barriers and inspiring others are also rewarding parts of learning soccer as a girl. You become;
Part of a Bigger Movement
When girls play soccer, they become part of a powerful movement that continues to break down old ideas about what girls can or should do. Each soccer girl player, simply by stepping onto the field, helps challenge outdated beliefs.
Stand on History’s Shoulders
For many players, there’s a special pride in being part of this bigger story, for example, with Meghan Rapinoe. Women’s soccer has come a long way in recent years, with more people watching, supporting, and creating opportunities. Today’s players build on what pioneering women did before them— women who fought for the right to play, often facing a lot of people who didn’t think girls should play sports.
Being a Role Model
Girl players often become role models, whether they realize it or not. The eight-year-old girl playing in a local league might inspire her five-year-old sister to try soccer. The middle school star might encourage younger girls to keep playing. The high school player might show younger girls that you can be great at sports and school at the same time. Aren’t you inspired by a professional female soccer player playing, maybe for your national team or a female soccer team you admire?
Create New Opportunities
This part of soccer – being part of positive change and inspiring others – adds a deeper meaning to playing. Many girl players feel good knowing they’re helping create more opportunities for future generations of girls, both in sports and in life more generally.
6. Experience Fun Competition
Among the benefits of learning soccer as a girl is experiencing fun competition.
There’s a special excitement in competitive sports that’s hard to find elsewhere in life. The butterflies before a big game, the challenge of playing against good opponents, the joy of a well-earned victory. These experiences create vivid memories and powerful feelings.
Test Your Limits
Soccer offers endless opportunities to test your limits, try things that feel scary, and discover what you’re capable of under pressure. The lessons learned through competition— how to prepare mentally, how to perform despite being nervous, how to focus when there are distractions— are valuable in many life situations.
Express Competitive Spirit
For girl players, competitive soccer provides a healthy outlet for ambition, aggression, and the desire to excel—traits that girls have sometimes been discouraged from showing in other situations. On the soccer field, these qualities become strengths.
Overcome Challenges
The best moments often come from overcoming big challenges: winning against a team that beat you before, successfully doing a difficult play you’ve practiced many times, or recovering from a setback to achieve success. These experiences build resilience and teach players to embrace challenges rather than avoid them.
Learning Sportsmanship
Competition in soccer also teaches important lessons about sportsmanship: how to win nicely, lose with dignity, respect opponents, and play by the rules. These values translate directly to ethical behavior in other competitive situations throughout life.
7. Opens Doors to New Opportunities
One of the greatest benefits of learning soccer is opening doors to new opportunities. How?
Expanding Your World
Soccer can open doors to experiences and opportunities that might otherwise be unavailable. From travel teams that explore new cities to international programs that connect players across cultures, soccer can quite literally expand your world.
Education Opportunities
For players who are good at both soccer and school, soccer scholarships can help make college more affordable. Women’s soccer offers among the highest numbers of college soccer scholarships of any girls’ sport, creating paths to higher education for thousands of players each year.
Career Possibilities
Beyond college, soccer offers various career paths – from professional play to coaching, sports management, athletic training, and other related jobs. Many women soccer players find that the leadership skills and connections developed through soccer help advance their careers even in non-sports fields.
Global Connections
The worldwide nature of soccer creates opportunities for international connections and learning about other cultures. Soccer is truly the world’s game, creating a common language and shared passion that goes beyond country borders and language differences. As a girl soccer player, you can find yourself part of a worldwide community united by love for the beautiful game.
Lifelong Participation
Even for those who don’t play soccer at elite levels, the sport offers opportunities for lifelong participation through adult recreational leagues, coaching youth teams, or simply kicking a ball around with friends and family. Unlike some sports that become hard to play after competitive years end, soccer can remain part of your life at any age.
8. Find Your Inner Strength
Last but not least the most rewarding parts of learning soccer is that it helps you find your inner strength.
Test Your Limits
Perhaps the most personal reward of soccer is discovering your own inner strength. The toughness, determination, and courage that come out when facing challenges. Soccer continually tests your limits, asking you to run a little farther, try a little harder, or be a little braver than you thought possible.
Discover What You Can Do
Through soccer, you learn that you’re capable of pushing through tiredness, overcoming fear, and keeping going despite setbacks. You discover the satisfaction of setting goals and working consistently to achieve them, even when progress is slow or obstacles appear.
Find Hidden Strength
Many female players describe moments when soccer helped them find strength they didn’t know they had. The defender who plays through pain to help her team in an important game, the midfielder who finds energy in overtime, and the forward who keeps shooting despite earlier misses. These experiences build a deep, lasting confidence in your own abilities.
Build Mental Toughness
This inner strength becomes particularly valuable during life’s inevitable challenges. Soccer players develop mental toughness that helps them handle school pressure, stress, personal losses, and other difficulties with greater resilience.
The Final Whistle
The rewards of soccer go way beyond goals scored or games won. For soccer girls, soccer offers a journey of self-discovery, growth, and connection that enriches many parts of life.
From the youngest player just learning to kick a ball to older players in adult leagues, each stage of the soccer journey brings its own special rewards. The skills, friendships, confidence, and memories created through soccer become treasures that last a lifetime.
Soccer truly is a beautiful game, not just for the athletic moves and skills, but for the amazing people and moments it creates along the way.
