Ruby Jackson '17 Recruiting Profile

I am a happy, well-balanced and sociable 18 year old girl nearing completion of my final year of high school.

Sport has been an important part of my life including soccer, gymnastics, athletics and skiing. In my younger years I competed at numerous national championships in gymnastics but chose to focus full-time on soccer from around the age of 14.

I have competed at 7 Australian national championships (representing my home state, New South Wales) in soccer,  toured Japan with the Australian Schoolgirls team in Jan 2016 and am hopeful of touring Great Britain with the Australian Schoolgirls team in Jan 2017 after I graduate. During the recently completed Australian W-League season I was a train-on in Sydney FC's women's squad. Although I have never formally trained for athletics, I have been athletics champion for my age in most of my high school years. My family and I are all keen skiers and have skied many times in North America including Steamboat Colorado,  Jackson Hole Wyoming and Whistler in BC, Canada. 

I have captained my club and state (NSW) soccer sides for many years and pride myself on providing encouragement and on-field instruction to my fellow team mates. I consider myself to be a versatile player having played 9, 10, 7, 11 in my earlier representative years and more recently 6/8 for NSW. In 2012 (and playing up two age groups), I kept a clean sheet in goals for Manly U16 in the NSW Premier League (the highest level of representative football in NSW) Preliminary Final then played #10 in the Grand Final winning team the following weekend.

Rather than attending university in Australia, I would very much like to attend a US college and join a US college women's soccer program. 

In February 2014, I was lucky enough to attend a training session at UCLA with coaches Amanda Cromwell and Josh Walters (prior to competing at the Las Vegas Mayor's Cup). This experience, coupled with internet research as well as discussions with a friend currently playing college soccer, gives me confidence that attending a well regarded US college would assist me in simultaneously achieving a college degree while furthering my soccer skills (thereby contributing to my ultimate goal of playing soccer professionally and for my country).