The friendship began with junior Crystal Hoffman and sophomore Delaney Loprieno meeting on their club Heat United soccer team.

The girls quickly formed a friendship after being on the U-10 team. At first, it was only Loprieno and Hoffman. Within a few years now sophomores Beth Parks, McKenna Moffett, Bri Geradi, Jessica Galason and Rachel Zobott joined the team.

Starting out, all girls did not know each other. Some had played against each other on opposing teams but they never shared a pass or high fived each other celebrating a goal.

As their knowledge on the field increased, so did their knowledge of each other.

“It was all one big family from the start,” said Parks, who is an outside midfielder.

They went from being on the Heat United U-10 team to now the U-16 team, and in those six years, memories were made.

Memories such as last fall when all the seven soccer players took a coach bus from Illinois to North Carolina for a U-16 soccer tournament making for a 17 hour bus ride.

They watched movies, ate puppy chow and danced, all on the moving vehicle. They describe that memory as “a good time.”

Their friendship only grew when they all went to Six Flags during Fright Fest. They describe this as their second best memory among six years of great times.

They consider their pasta parties to be the most entertaining time spent time together. They cherish their first team pasta party held the night before their first game of the season as the most important since that was the night they all opened up to each other outside of soccer.

The games and traveling serve as the primary reason for their friendship. The gossiping done in the hotel rooms during tournaments increased their trust. The team dinners have brought them closer to being a family.

Their knowledge of one another is grown above how they play soccer.

“We have played with each other for so long we know how we play,” said Zobott, a center defender. “We can trust that we are going to be there.”

Since they were 11 and 12, all of the girls have been on the same soccer team all year round. As their physical and mental growth in soccer increased throughout the years, so did their friendship.

Their bond increased every time a pass was made. They trusted that they would be there to trap the ball when a play was made.

Good times are not always experienced on the field. Rough plays come up and they lead to nerves and aggravated shouts being made to one another on the field, but the hard feelings are always left behind.

“When we freak out at each other during games we don’t take it off the field,” said Zobott. “We know we don’t mean it and that we are all still friends.”

Due to the seven girls strong understanding and comfort with each other, upon entering their freshman team in high school they all made the varsity soccer team.

If all seven girls being a part of the Huntley High School varsity soccer team was not enough, they were still a part of the Heat United soccer team.

Their strong presence of each other on the soccer transformed into their normal, daily school life.

Most have two to four classes together. They share the same lunch period and all sit next to each other. Right after school they prepare for their daily two-hour-and-45-minute practice.

“We gravitate to each other all the time,”  said center midfielder McKenna Moffett.

For only six years ago at the young age of 11 and 12 they were strangers to each other and now at the age of 15 and 16 and after they have spent years playing on the same team they consider themselves “sisters.”

They went from just being “girls on their soccer team” to best friends talking over each other and screeching with laughter in the school hallways and on the soccer field.

The soccer games, goals, cheers, disappointments from a lost game, traveling, and pasta parties in the last six years have not gone to waste; they all feel confident they will be friends for a lifetime since they are bound by their love for soccer.