Academy Player Inspired by First Team Training Camp in Montana
OL Reign’s arrival in Missoula, Montana for preseason ahead of the NWSL Challenge Cup was met with a warm reception from the local community. No one was more excited, though, than OL Reign Academy’s and Ava Lawyer, who plays on the OL Reign Academy ‘09 Rouge team while residing in Plains, Montana.
Plains is a town of just over 1,000 people located 77 miles northwest of Missoula, up the MT-200. So how does a girl from a place like Plains become a member of an academy based almost 435 miles away?
Ambition.
“I wanted to get more competition, so my dad reached out to a bunch of different clubs,” Ava said. “I have cousins from Oregon, so I went and was a guest player [for OL Reign Academy] at a tournament down there. They wanted me back, so we just decided to do it.”
For Ava’s father, Nick, said the Academy’s commitment to being a women-led organization was a big plus that helped OL Reign Academy stand out.
“We very much want our daughter to be empowered to be a leader and be strong in her life, Nick said. “That was one of the things that motivated us to reach out and connect with the Reign.”
Long travel distances and high-level youth soccer go hand-in-hand in the United States. Still, the commute made by the Lawyer family to get Ava to her teammates involves an eight-hour drive. According to the Lawyers, they made the trip three times last season and had planned to make the trip every other week this year to further Ava’s development.
“Ava has an older brother who just graduated, so that freed up more travel time for her sports on our end,” Nick said.
Still, the Lawyers’ plans were disrupted, like the rest of the youth soccer community, when COVID-19 abruptly altered the immediate future of the sport. Ava has had to focus on training inside by herself, while participating in online sessions run by OL Reign Academy technical staff, and using the Techne app used by OL Reign Academy coaches to help players hone their skills remotely away from team trainings.
“I like Techne because it’s something to do in your downtime,” Ava said. “It’s something that you do every day, but it just helps you with those little things like ball work and how to pass and shoot. I like it a lot.”
Having the first team going through preseason so close to home is even better motivation to keep working hard.
“It’s pretty crazy,” Ava said. “We don’t really get many opportunities like that. I have aunts in Seattle, so we’ve gotten to see a few games out there in Washington, but mostly we see the Montana Griz in person. We’re used to normally watching (OL Reign) on television.”
For a few weeks in June, Ava and her father were able to watch the first team train through the chain link fence at the University of Montana Soccer Field. Nick hopes the club’s camp in Missoula will shine more light on soccer in Montana.
“I always feel like Montana gets viewed as a backwater of soccer, compared to the national scene,” Nick said. “It’s just so empowering to have OL Reign have a presence in our state in this beautiful place where we have a beautiful field. I really think we have some pretty great soccer here. It’s tough, we’re 70 miles from Missoula and 400 miles from Seattle, but for them to be in our backyard, I feel like it elevates our soccer scene and helps identify that ‘gosh, we’re worth looking at.’ Montana has some really awesome things going on in the world of soccer.”
While the first team wasn’t able to stay in Missoula forever, the Lawyers are proof that part of the club—their club—will remain in Montana long after the OL Reign departs for Utah at the end of June.
“We hope it’s a good experience for the first team players and we hope they come back,” Nick said. “We loved having them here.”