Jemma House freely admits she didn’t see herself seeing out the first year of a scholarship to play college soccer in the United States.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The 20-year-old from Kurri Kurri said she expected to become too homesick to stay and overwhelmed by the demands of life on a US campus.
But after setting all sorts of personal and team records and captaining her junior college team Laramie Community College, she moves up to division one of the college system with a place at the University of Wyoming.
The university set House on her journey, selecting Laramie for her to acclimatise to the US college system.
The first part of the mission has been accomplished and despite receiving several offers from other division one schools, House said she was always committed to playing for the University of Wyoming.
“They are a division one school in the Mountain West Conference playing against teams from San Diego, Texas, Colorado and through to Las Vegas,” she said.
“It’s exciting, I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a new school, a much bigger school and new teammates, but I will have a couple of friends from Australia there who I played with at college.
“I knew them through playing in high school representative teams back in Australia, but we’ve become really good friends in the US.
“Whenever we get a break we travel together to get to see the country and next year we’re going to do a big road trip in summer rather than come back home.
“I’ll be back home for Christmas and it’s going to be a long time away from my family, but the opportunity to see and experience America is just too good.”
House said her old school and coaching staff were only 40 minutes away from the University of Wyoming so she had them to call on during a long season.
Captaining the team in her final year, House scored 32 goals in 27 matches, got a hat-trick in the regional final and was named the most valuable player at the regional and national titles.
Laramie County recorded their best result at the titles finishing third.