KARNS CITY, Pa. (EYT/D9) — When Emma Dailey was a little girl, she had a big dream.
She wanted to play soccer professionally.
As the years went by, Dailey realized that lofty goal was probably a tad unrealistic. Still, she wanted to play the game she fell in love with the first time her toe touched ball as long as she could.
Dailey, a senior, physical forward for the Karns City girls soccer team who can both score and set others up to find the back of the net, will get a chance to play for at least four more years at Grove City College.
“I mean, every little kid dreams of going and playing professionally,” Dailey said. “But I knew that, as I got older, that probably wasn’t going to be my first thought. But I knew ever since I was little that I wanted to play in college.”
Before her junior year at Karns City, Dailey made a college visit to Grove City that the urging of her mother and Gremlins’ soccer coach Tracy Dailey.
Emma’s father, Jake Dailey, is an alma mater of the school.
“As soon as I walked on campus,” Emma said, “it just felt like home.”
Dailey, who wants to go into the education field, certainly did her homework on GCC.
She met as many people as she could, both within the women’s soccer program and outside of it. She walked the campus and asked lots of questions.
Dailey was sold.
“Everyone was just so welcoming,” she said. “I just felt like those were the type of people who could help me grow into a better person. The soccer team was just a cherry on the top. They were so nice.”
Dailey attended a college ID soccer camp at Grove City College and met a few of the soccer players for the Wolverines.
“I keep saying this, but they were so welcoming,” Dailey said. “Everyone there just wants the best for all of us, even if that wasn’t where we wanted to go. Everyone is nice at Karns City, but this was next-level nice.”
Dailey certainly built an attractive resumé while playing at Karns City.
Dailey was part of three District 9 championships, including this season in which she scored 24 goals to go with 22 assists.
Last season as a junior, she had her best season with 27 goals and 27 assists.
She realizes, however, that she’s going to have to up her game when she gets to Grove City in the fall.
“I definitely want to work on my speed of play, because you’re playing against bigger, faster, stronger girls,” Dailey said. “I’m pretty built, but there’s definitely a lot of things that I want to work on and speed is one of them, and my pace of play. I’m going to get into some weightlifting here in the offseason.”
Dailey also plans on playing some for the Pittsburgh Hotspurs this summer to get ready for the rigors of college soccer.
One thing Dailey has never lacked is toughness, both physically and mentally, on the pitch.
She wants to get better at both of those things, too.
“I’m the type of person who takes criticism to heart,” Dailey said. “If I make a mistake, I kind of think about it and it sometimes takes me out of my game. I want to work on that more, how to when I make a mistake to forget about it.”
What Dailey won’t easily forget is her high school soccer career at Karns City.
Dailey was part of another group that kept that Gremlin girls soccer legacy going.
Karns City has won district titles in 10 of the last 11 years and in 24 of the last 28 seasons.
It’s an astonishing run of success.
But Dailey said what she will think of most fondly when it comes to her time as a Gremlin is the bonds she made with her teammates.
She played with many of them when they were all as young as 7.
“The thing I’ll most cherish is playing with the group of girls that I started with,” Dailey said. “When we moved back here from Virginia, I was playing on the Turf Monster team that was made up out of the Chicora and Sugarcreek (Elementary) kids. I met Paige Dodd off of that and we’ve been best friends ever since. We just kept adding girls onto that.
“As soon as we got to the varsity level, it was just a different chemistry amongst all of us. It really makes me wish we were all staying together.”
But sadly, as often is the case, players from great teams like Karns City scatter to the four winds.
Emma Dailey ended up landing a little north at Grove City College.
She hopes to see the pitch as much as possible as a freshman for the Wolverines, but she realizes she has to work hard and prove she belongs.
“I mean, obviously, I want to play right away,” Dailey said. “But there are girls who have been there who have more experience at the collegiate level than I do. The important thing to me is to work hard, no matter what. If I end up with a starting spot because of my hard work, that’s just the way God wants it to be.”
