MONTEVIDEO, November 18, 2018 -- Before every game Trinity Rodman writes the 10 letters on her wrist. Those letters are the initials of the five most important people in her life. The people that she has in the back of her mind every time she steps onto the field. Her mother, her sister, her brother, her niece and her nephew. Her family.
Playing for the five on her wrist, and many others at home have driven the 16-year-old girl to work as hard as she can every minute of every day to achieve her goal of one day playing for the full US Women’s National Team.
Her last name may sound familiar to sports fans, that is because Dennis Rodman—the five-time NBA champion—is her father. She took after the NBA superstar on the basketball court, and also played flag American football growing up. But to the young child, those were just a hobby. Soccer was different.
“As I got older and just became more mature and knew more about the game, I was more intrigued about what would actually come with it and which opportunities I could get with college and the U.S. team,” Rodman, who plays as forward, says to AIPS. “And so, I guess once I got older, 10 or 11, that’s when I first started thinking, ‘Wow, I can actually go somewhere with this’.”
Rodman is a junior in high school and verbally committed to play at UCLA last year as a sophomore.
As the second-youngest player on the USA U-17 Women’s National Team, a roster spot on the World Cup squad did not come easy to her. She was called up to her first U-17 camp last August but did not get asked back until July. From then on, she has appeared at every U-17 event since. This is not a coincidence.
Outside of scheduled training Rodman spends her free time going to the gym to get in extra lifts and fitness. She also takes time to analyze her game to see what she needs to improve on and does on it on her own time. The U-17 national player takes extra shots to advance her shooting and sets up cones to work on her technical game.
“It’s more of a me thing,” Rodman said. “Just wanting to be good all of the time, just being young and I feel like I need to prove myself more.”
Young Rodman ditched the basketball shoes and hung-up the American football flag. In the end, those were just something to do on the side. She found herself wanting to go to soccer practice to get better and longing to get to her soccer games, just so she could win. Soccer was her true love.
Once a three-sport athlete as a child, Rodman turned into a young woman with a dream, a passion, and complete determination to be successful at playing the game she loved.
As she chases her dream to play for the senior team, she will approach every game the same. She takes it day by day and focuses on the present time, focusing on the game at hand and what she needs to accomplish in that game. And of course, she has her pre-game ritual where she takes a pen and writes the initials of her loved ones.
“I guess that’s just what I do because they’re always in the back of my mind because that’s who I think about when I play.”
