Green hones soccer skills and gains cultural insights in Sweden

“I’ve never been out of this country before, which was super cool to experience and just to see how the way people do things is different… Seeing someone speaking a completely different language but at the same time knowing and understanding everything they’re saying is super cool. I like the way language is built,” Walker said.

Junior Tessah Green started playing soccer for the Saint Paul Blackhawks at nine years old. While she has been traveling to different states across the country for years, she had been anticipating her two-week trip to Sweden with her team ever since that young age.

“Every year the U16s go on the trip, so you hear stories from other teams and that gets you really excited to go,” Green said.

When her time finally came, Green and her team traveled to Sweden to play in the Gothia Cup, stayed with host families in Denmark, and had a layover in Iceland.

“We all didn’t go with our parents [to Sweden], and we got to see people from all over the world, so that was cool. We won one game because we weren’t really thinking about playing soccer in Sweden…. For a lot of us, that was our first time going out of the country, so that was really fun,” Green said.

While for some teams the Cup is an intense competition, for Green’s team, the trip was more about the adventure than playing soccer.

“There’s been other teams that had a better chance of winning, but my team, we didn’t think we were going to win. It was still fun playing against different countries, but I would say [the focus of the trip] was mostly on new experiences,” Green said.

Some of the highlights of the trip for Green were seeing the Blue Lagoon in Iceland and staying with host families in Denmark. Four of the girls from the families that the teammates stayed with traveled with Green’s team to Sweden, where they played on the Blackhawk’s C2 team. Green found it interesting to see how other teams practiced.

“We practiced with the Denmark girls, so that was fun seeing how different teams trained,” Green said.

The trip was a valuable bonding experience for Green’s team as well, and the girls found it difficult to say goodbye to Europe.

“We all became a lot closer after the trip. [The hardest part of the trip was] not wanting to go home,” Green said.