From Kinderkickers to Pro Soccer: Sky Blue defender Sabrina Flores speaks to BB&N
Grasping on to the railings of her kitchen counter, five-year-old Sabrina Flores would cry as her parents attempted to drag her out of the house and drive her to soccer practice.
“I don’t know why I would cry, but I think, at first, it was because I was scared of soccer,” Flores said. “However, as I played the game more and more, I began to love it more and more.”
Nearly 20 years after wailing on the kitchen floor, the Mexican-American and New Jersey native is now a 24-year old professional soccer player in the National Women’s Soccer League (NSWL) for Sky Blue FC. On November 23, Flores spoke to a group of BB&N students and faculty on her journey to becoming a professional soccer player.
Flores first started playing soccer when her parents enrolled her and her twin sister, Monica Flores, into the NJ-based program KinderKickers, which introduces fundamental soccer skills to young children between the ages of three and five years old.
In addition to soccer, Flores participated in gymnastics and basketball during her childhood since her parents wanted their children to participate in multiple sports and extracurriculars at a young age, she said. When she reached the eighth grade, however, she decided to focus solely on soccer.
“I decided to stick with only soccer because I was going to have to put more commitment in the sport to reach the next level,” Flores said.
Growing up, Flores looked up to Barcelona forward Lionel Messi and former U.S. women’s national team defender and NJ native Yael Averbuch. She admired how Messi relied on the technical and skillful aspects of soccer and how he related to her as they both are not always the “biggest, strongest, or fastest person on the field.”
On the other hand, Flores also viewed Averbuch as a role model because she played the same position as her and lived in the neighboring town from her own.
“As a child, I wanted to be just like Averbush. I loved her work ethic and her playing style. We also came from the same area in New Jersey, which is one of the reasons why I could relate to her so much.”
In her youth career, Flores played for clubs PDA Slammers and SDFC Lynx and Livingston High School’s Girls Varsity Soccer team, where she starred along with her sister Monica.
“I think I’m one of the luckiest people in the world because I have a twin sister who has a lot of the same passions as me since day one,” Flores said. “From kindergarten to high school, I always had a training partner to play with in the backyard every day, and I think having that advantage really helped us both develop as players.”
Monica has also reached the professional level and currently plays for Mexican club Monterrey in the Liga MX Femenil.
In 2011 and 2012, Flores first became involved with U.S. soccer when she participated in the U-15 and U-16 Girls National Team Camps. She later appeared in two games for the U-18 women’s youth national team. In her senior year of high school, Top Drawer Soccer gave Flores a four-star rating and ranked her as the 17th best player and 5th best defender in the class of 2014.
After graduating from high school, Flores elected to play college soccer at Notre Dame along with her sister because it was a strong academic institution and would help her develop as a soccer player, she said. As she reflected over her college career, Flores said that she had to make several sacrifices—particularly in her social life—to fully concentrate on soccer.
“Even though I wouldn’t look at these as sacrifices since soccer is what I thoroughly love to do, in college, I had to really focus on academics and soccer since those were big-time commitments,” she said. “I had to give a lot of early mornings and late nights for training, so I was never really the type of person who went to parties or other social events.”
In her college career, Flores recorded five goals and 18 assists. In 2015, the U-20 U.S. women’s national team called her up to play in the 2015 CONCACAF Championship, where the team was victorious. A year later, Flores redshirted her junior season to train with the U.S. women’s national team to play in the 2016 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup.
Some of her college accolades included a 2014 ACC All-Freshman Team selection, 3x ACC Honor Roll selections, and a 2018 Google Cloud Academic All-District Second Team selection.
After graduating college in 2018, she spent a year in the United Women’s Soccer League (UWS)—the 2nd tier of professional women’s football in the U.S—with LA Galaxy OC. There, she recorded five assists in eight matches and earned All-UWS honors for the 2018-19 season.
After her stint in the UWS, NWSL club Sky Blue FC drafted Flores with the 7th pick in the 4th round of the 2019 NWSL College Draft. Before beginning her career with Sky Blue, she received an opportunity to play with Spanish side Sevilla F.C. during the 2019-20 season. She made a total of 11 appearances with the club and described leaving for Spain as one of the toughest moments in her career.
“It was tough because I had to leave my family for the first time,” she said. “I would consider that to be one of my biggest sacrifices in my career: spending that year in Spain away from my relatives.”
Flores returned to the U.S. last June when she signed a 2-year contract with Sky Blue. She appeared in her first game for the club in the NWSL Cup opener after the league had suspended play for months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
During her talk with members of the BB&N community, Gerson Personnat ’21 asked Flores how she would compare playing soccer in Spain to playing soccer in the United States. In response, Flores analogized the difference between U.S. soccer and European soccer to the playstyles of Lionel Messi and Juventus and Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo respectively.
“Messi is the type of player who knows the game intuitively and has an unconventional playing style that is very technical and skill-based while Ronaldo, in my opinion, seems to focus more on the mechanics of the game: if you watch the way he sprints, he passes, he shoots, everything is mechanically perfected and almost robotic.”
“In Spain, people know the game. Even if they’re not physically adept or fundamentally precise as other players, they’re like Messi in that they make things that we would view as unnatural seem natural. They’re really good at thinking outside of the box and the game is very possession-oriented and skill-oriented.”
In the case of the United States, Flores explained that the players are more physical and athletic and focus on repetition and precision.
“In the U.S., I think the system is more about practicing the exact technique. Everything is performance-driven, about reps and reps, and the fundamentals of every passing or touch technique. Like Ronaldo, players in the U.S. also rely more on their athletic ability while playing soccer.”
Flores said that she hopes to serve as a mentor to younger players who are striving to make it to the professional level.
“I’ve had plenty of mentors and people who have helped get me to this point in my career. From my teammates to my sister to my family, I’ve had a lot of people to go to for support. In my career, I hope to be one of those people who can guide and inspire players to pursue a career in this sport.”
