Young Vancouver girl brings many talents to soccer field

PORTLAND – Megan Alger is a player, a coach and a philanthropist. And she’s only 10 years old.

Meg, as she likes to be called, coaches two youth soccer league teams in Vancouver, Wash., in addition to playing as a midfielder on a team across the border in Gresham, Ore.

This Sunday, she’s hosting her own fund-raising event at a Vancouver middle school for Soccer Kicks for Cancer.

In other words, Meg is one busy kid.

“We’ve tried always to instill in our kids that it’s important to give back,” said her mother, Rayann Alger. “Megan always runs with it. She’s always trying to come up with new things to do, and ways to help.”

Sam Snow, director of coaching education for U.S. Youth Soccer says he’s heard of coaches as young as 14, but not 10.

“This is definitely a first for me,” he said.

Meg coaches a pair of teams, the U-5 Chipmunks (for kids under 5) and the U-7 Timbers. Her 7-year-old brother, Owen, plays for the Timbers. Both are recreational teams for the Evergreen Soccer Club in southwest Washington.

“I kinda always wanted to coach, and there’s was a team and they didn’t have a coach,” she said. “So I decided I could do it.”

She says her biggest problem is getting her kids, especially the 5-year-olds, to stay on the field.

“A lot of people are OK with it,” she said. “Some people don’t expect me to be the coach so they walk up to my mom and she has to tell them I’m the coach.”

Tom Merritt, a representative for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, a co-sponsor of the Soccer Kicks for Cancer program, said he was surprised when he called on a coach who had signed up. The coach was Meg.

Meg organized Sunday’s event at WyEast Middle School because she had already hit up a lot of people she knew to donate for a local Walk for the Cure. Her fund-raiser is officially a Juggle-A-Thon, but because a lot of the kids are young and can’t juggle, the event will also be a skills and drills soccer clinic.

“She thought it would be good for her kids to participate in the program – just like adult coaches get their kids involved,” Merritt said.

If that wasn’t enough, Rayann Alger added, Meg is also collecting soccer balls, too, because a family friend working for the Peace Corps said the children in the village she was working needed them.

Meg has always loved soccer, and plays for the Eastside United Football Club’s Sunderland team. Her heroine is from nearby Portland.

“The person that I look up to the most is Tiffeny Milbrett. I train with her sometimes and she’s short like me,” Meg said. “I really want to be a pro soccer player some day.”

As a coach, Meg is facing the challenges even the likes of Phil Jackson and Bill Parcells must deal with.

“The smaller team that I coach, they get upset if they don’t win,” she said. “So I have to tell them that it’s OK when they don’t win.”