Tennessee-Martin commit Brooke Kala getting a kick out of playing with Newark’s team for the first time this spring

Brooke Kala’s soccer experience this spring will be both a new and familiar one.

And her coach is glad to have her.

Kala, a Newark senior and Division I Tennessee-Martin commit, did not play high school soccer her first three years at Newark. The Newark-Seneca soccer co-op fields a boys team, but not a girls team. The boys season, in most years competed in the fall, conflicts with Kala’s club schedule.

That all changed when the IHSA moved boys soccer to the spring during this pandemic-adjusted calendar. Shortly before Thanksgiving, first-year Newark-Seneca coach Henry Cheung reached out to Kala about playing with the school team.

“The coach was pretty good at convincing me,” Kala said. “I hadn’t thought about it until he reached out. He did a good job with it. Once I looked at my schedule and it was pretty open, I decided to do it.”

Cheung, also the women’s soccer coach at Kishwaukee and a former club coach, already can ascertain Kala’s superior skill set through four days of practice. Cheung, a Shorewood resident who played soccer for Bentham Academy in North Yorkshire, England, before relocating to the Chicago area in 1995, was hired to coach the Newark-Seneca program in January 2020.

“The school had told me we had a really good player that never played,” Cheung said. “I reached out before Thanksgiving, I said I’m the new coach and wanted to see if you’d be interested in playing. I told her this is your last year and I think it would be good for you to play in the community, something you would enjoy. Without hesitation, she said ‘yes coach, I would like to play.’ ”

Kala said it’s been an adjustment working alongside the boys, but it’s nothing new to her.

She grew up playing with the boys as part of the Yorkville-based Phoenix Soccer Club in grade school and middle school. She remembered being teammates on the Phoenix with Earlville standout Devyn Kennedy.

“I always enjoyed playing with the guys,” Kala said. “It was a lot better than playing on the girls team. When I was finally forced to play on a girls team I was kind of complaining to my mom that it was too easy. I liked growing up with the boys, it was competitive and it pushed me.”

Kala has played club with Chicago Inter Soccer Club in Lockport. She helped CISC to an undefeated record this past fall as a skilled midfielder.

While playing soccer in her home town will be new, Kala isn’t a stranger to new experiences. In August of 2019 she traveled to Lyon, France, with the Chicago Soccer Academy. She was able to play, and also watched the woman’s national team and French national team practice and play.

“She’s been playing high-level soccer her whole life,” Cheung said. “I think this experience this spring will be fun.”

With an IHSA rule that prevents students from playing for a club team and a high school team at the same time being relaxed for soccer this school year because of the season’s move to the spring, Kala is able to compete for both her school and club team.

Kala will practice three days at school, and then two days with her club team. Kala said club play won’t prevent her from making any high school games, but she will be out of town for spring break hiking the Grand Canyon and going to Sedona.

She’s a great addition to a team that returns talented goal scorers Carson Collett and Steven Martin.

“She is just phenomenal from seeing her practice with her skill, her communication, teaching the underclassmen,” Cheung said. “Brooke will probably dominate in the midfield, running box to box. She will be the one with the ball attacking.”

Kala, who has played basketball in high school at Newark, looks forward to this spring’s experience.

“I think playing high school is good to adjust my portfolio, to see the different athletes, male and female,” Kala said. “It will prepare me for college playing against these boys who are big and who could knock me over if they want to, to see how I can do up against the boys. I want to stay in shape and just have fun with my classmates.”