Opening Secret Santa presents, laughing together at team bonding dinners and going swimming at a teammate’s house — Heidi Lu (12) cherishes these memories from the course of her many years playing soccer that the Harker girls soccer team collectively made together. 

After playing soccer since age six both competitively and for the school team, Heidi appreciates the little moments with her teammates the most. The team aspect of soccer convinced her to competitively commit to the sport once she started middle school — something that a more individual sport that relied solely on her performance, like swimming, lacked.

“My dad played soccer when he was young, so it was just one of the many sports my parents decided I should play,” Heidi said. “In middle school, I had to make the choice between swimming and soccer, and I chose soccer because I really enjoyed the team aspect and connecting with other people since I’m a very social person.”

Throughout her twelve-year experience playing soccer, she realized how much her choice of playing soccer shaped her cooperative and optimistic character and offered her many opportunities. Heidi also noticed not only how much the people and environment surrounding her could shape her experience both on and off the field but also how discovered a fascination and dedication to a sport could bring people together.

“From soccer, I learned more about teamwork and how everyone brings their own different qualities and strengths to the table, and that not just one person can lead the entire team,” Heidi said. “Communicating, being a leader, and bringing together everyone’s different personalities are probably my biggest takeaways from playing soccer for so long.” 

Soccer teammate and close friend Cynthia Wang (12) first met Heidi in elementary school, where the two quickly formed a bond. In particular, Cynthia admires her ability to balance her social and academic life and her optimism.

“My first impression of Heidi was someone who could really balance being social and studious at the same time, and that perception hasn’t really changed besides that she’s become much more extroverted since we were in elementary school,” Cynthia said. “She’s a really fun person to be around and I really admire how she’s able to find positivity in everything.”

Upper school Advanced Yearbook teacher Kevin Oliver echoes Cynthia’s perspective on Heidi’s ability to balance, particularly in the context of yearbook production. In her junior year, Heidi assumed the role of People and Seniors Editor for the yearbook, and this year, she took on the position of Academics Editor of the yearbook. Oliver, having taught Heidi for two years, notes her growth in confidence since he met her.

“She’s become a much more independent person from her junior to senior year,” Oliver said. “She spends a lot of time working on the yearbook and is very mindful of the styles and desires of her fellow staff members on TALON, but she also has a very good individual sense of what she needs to do to create a rewarding and memorable output that she is proud of. That may have always been the case and I think this has always shown in her pages, but it’s especially shining through this year.”

In addition to being a member of the TALON Yearbook staff, Heidi also joined as a member of DECA, which helped her bring that independence from TALON to the business world. Having joined during her freshman year, which was online due to COVID-19, her DECA experience did not officially start until her sophomore year. During that year, Heidi recognized her interest in business, and that summer, she applied for a job at a Korean dessert cafe at Cupertino Main Street as a team member, teaching her more applicable skills for a real-world environment, like confidence and communication, that she could expand on. 

“Having a job gave me that real-world experience that made me more interested in business as well,” Heidi said. “The summer before my junior year, I worked at Sul & Beans in Cupertino and since I had never had a job before, the new environment was pretty hard to adjust to just because I didn’t know anyone there and the other employees were a lot older than me. Interacting with them in such a fast-paced and new environment definitely took some getting used to, but by the end of the summer, I was a lot more confident in working in that kind of environment.”

Translating her newfound confidence and comfort from business to her social life, close friend Ella Lan (12) commends the contagiousness of Heidi’s confidence and her ability to make others feel comfortable.

“She’s such a genuine person and is naturally able to get other people to bring out their more humorous sides,” Ella said. “Something I appreciate about her is that she’s not afraid to show her vulnerability, which I feel is a unique trait to have that is so important in a friend. A lot of these qualities about her, she’s so unaware of herself, and she never really second guesses her choices because she knows that it’s the right thing to do.”

As her growth in confidence and comfort applies to many aspects of her life, so does teamwork, communication, and leadership, which are all lessons Heidi learned through playing soccer. Whether she’s working at Sul & Beans, finishing a DECA presentation or playing hard out on the field with her teammates, the lessons Heidi takes away from each experience are applicable to everything she does.

“Doing some sort of team sport in high school, whether it’s dance, robotics, or soccer, for me, I thought it was really worthwhile and it exposes you to an entirely new community of people you really would never meet or talk to unless you joined the team,” Heidi said. “I think it also gave me an entirely new skill set of teamwork, communication skills, and leadership that applies to basically everything I do.”