Despite Injury, Teen's Olympic Spirit Still Alive

In March 2011, Green Brook soccer player Maddy Kirchofer was kicking a goal when a terrible accident occurred.

"The goalie landed on my leg and broke it," she said, describing in fairly detailed anatomical terms which bones were affected and the treatments that followed.

But she glosses over the real impact of the injury: for months, she couldn't walk or run—and certainly couldn't tryout for the elite soccer teams she had worked hard to qualify for, nor could she participate in her other favorite sports.

By the time doctors said she was ready to play again, it was August and too late to join any team, except her school team. Hoping to give her a chance to play again and tryout for a team, her parents took her to a tryout for the Olympic Development Program, the prestigious program looking for the best young players from which to choose the national team for international competitions.  

So, at a point in her young soccer career when many may have turned away from the game for other pursuits and after months of not playing, Kirchofer found herself pitted against about 200 of New Jersey's best young soccer players vying for a spot on the state team.

And she got one of the spots.

"I was shocked," she said about learning she had passed the first tryouts.

"I didn't feel that I was myself," she said about that first tryout. "My physical condition was barely enough to get through the tryouts."

Rebuilding her strength, speed and skill through the fall season on the team and playing for Match Fit, an elite team that grabbed her for its roster when they found out she was available, Kirchofer was ready for the second round of the ODP tryouts, held earlier this month at The College of New Jersey.

And, once again, she passed, one of 36 players picked for the team.

"They train as a state team for 10 weeks, then they'll compete against other state teams," her father, Reese Kirchofer, said. 

The culmination comes at the July regional camp in Rhode Island—qualifying there will put her on the most elite of the ODP teams, competing at the highest level of international youth soccer. 

Her strategy for earning a spot on the national team is to work hard in games, and try new things.

"They always say to take risks, so I'll try to take risks," she said.

Until then, this honor student has other goals to keep her moving forward: she competes with the school's track team in the 800M, long jump, and the high jump, in which she hopes to set a new school record (the record is currently 4 feet, 8 inches—her best, so far, is 4 feet, 7 inches).

After returning to top soccer form by leaps and bounds, an inch seems easily within her grasp.