Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022 | 2 a.m.
The drive is 4 hours, 7 minutes.
Hailey Gordon is picked up at school in Las Vegas on Tuesday afternoons by her father, who has the family’s 2016 Chrysler 300 C gassed up and ready for the haul into Southern California for soccer practice.
They arrive a little more than four hours later for her workout with Slammers FC HB Koge, a Costa Mesa-based team that’s considered one of the premier clubs in the Elite Clubs National League. The league is a breeding ground for top collegiate and national team soccer in the United States.
George Gordon drops of his 16-year-old daughter for the 90-minute training session and heads to refill the gas tank for the trip home.
They do the drive again on Fridays so Hailey can compete in a few games over the weekend with the Slammers.
The family has commuted to California the past eight years to find better competition for their daughter, and that Chrysler has 230,000 miles on it, “but is still running strong,” George Gordon jokingly said.
The grind is starting to pay dividends for Hailey, who was pegged by scouts with the Mexican national team during a league tournament in Seattle to join its identification camp. The forward proceeded to win a spot on Mexico’s under-17 roster and will travel next month to participate in the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup India.
Hailey, a Las Vegas native, is able to compete with Mexico because her mother is a Mexican national. Soccer is still a game, she said, but it’s massively more intense when representing a country.
“I’m playing at a much quicker pace now,” she says. “I’m working harder and harder in practice.”
Hailey Gordon describes her emotions as being simultaneously excited and nervous.
The journey of playing in FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup India includes training camps in Mexico City and then Spain before arriving in India. She left last week.
It’s her second appearance with the national team, initially proving her ability in an event last month in which Mexico played Canada, Chile and Colombia.
When she left Harry Reid International Airport for Mexico City, the family didn’t know what to expect when she went through the security gate three hours ahead of the international flight with no adult supervision.
But those drives into California for training and traveling the region for tournaments have helped form a certain level of sophistication in his daughter, George Gordon said. And cellphones are a great way to keep constant tabs.
“This is all normal for us now. This is our life,” said George Gordon, a former UNLV football player who was part of the program’s 2000 Las Vegas Bowl championship team. “We are so used to getting into a car and going, or planning our schedules to (accommodate) traveling.”
Hailey Gordon first got into soccer by following her sister to a camp. She was a few years younger, but didn’t back down and had immediate success. George Gordon recognized the talent and started having her train at Phase 1 Sports, a local training center that specializes in youth athletes and is operated by his former UNLV teammate, Mike Waters.
Waters confirmed the family’s suspicions about Hailey, who was 6 years old at the time.
At the end of one class, Hailey Gordon challenged the instructor to a foot race. She barely lost to the adult — and was visibly upset.
“The first thing I noticed is that she was very, very competitive,” Waters said. “She loses a races and gets mad. To me, that sets her apart.”
That competitiveness was on display in 2021-22 in the Elite Clubs National League, where she scored 40 goals against top competition and was part of the league’s all-conference team. She hopes to continue the goal-scoring with the Mexican national team in India.
“The games are going to be very physical, but I am ready for that because I’m an aggressive player,” Hailey Gordon said.
