By River Mitchell
@rivermitchell27
In April 2024, Summer Chong, a second-year midfielder for Springfield College’s women’s soccer team, got the opportunity of a lifetime to participate in training camp with the Singapore Women’s National Team in Saudi Arabia to help prepare for the Southeast Asian Games in 2025.
“[Playing] for the national team is really an honor,” Chong said. “I really felt the professionalism with the tournaments and how they set it up. It’s just a really good experience, and playing against higher ranked countries is really difficult, but it’s really fun.”
However, unlike most training camps, the team had a large break in the beginning and middle of the day before training at night. In Singapore, professional athletes don’t make enough money to support themselves financially. Oftentimes, they have to work a second job, which typically means having a two-to-three-hour practice in the evening before going to bed.
This isn’t Chong’s first rodeo either, as she has competed on national teams for a large chunk of her life. Growing up in Singapore, Chong got started in soccer when she was around 13 years old. Mostly focusing on music at the time, Chong saw some people playing soccer at her house, and naturally gravitated toward the sport.
She first got noticed by the national team during a tournament she was playing in, and since then has had numerous opportunities to practice alongside Singapore’s best players.
“I grew up playing for national teams,” Chong said. “For me, it’s a daily routine. I’ve been doing this my whole life, so I don’t think it’s that cool. I know it’s cool to other people, and they want that opportunity. But like I said, I grew up with it, so I didn’t really have any thought about how cool it was.”
In 2021, Chong moved to New Hampshire and went to high school there for two years. It was during her time in high school that she realized she wanted to take her talents to the NCAA.
“I realized I still wanted to play soccer at a higher level,” Chong said. “I realized at the collegiate level I could study and play soccer at the same time. I was like, ‘That’s a good deal.’”
While she got looks from Division I and II schools, including the University of Memphis, none of these offers really stood out to Chong. Proximity was also a big issue, with Memphis being almost 1500 miles away from her home in New Hampshire, it limited her options to a degree.
Springfield showed a lot of interest in Chong, and having some family in the area helped her make her decision final. As a first-year, Chong played 101 minutes while securing a goal in the season opener against Thomas College.
However, none of this success has come easy to Chong, as she has had to sacrifice a lot of her time and even social life to work on her craft.
“A lot of my friends actually complain that I don’t have any time for them at all. I’m trying to make it up to all of them,” she said. “I really sacrificed a lot of my time training by myself, making sure I fit [and] making sure my technical ability is at its finest. Even family time, I would sacrifice that just to train outside.”
One big part about the whole experience for Chong that has been really rewarding, was coming back to Alden Street and telling her teammates all about the experience and what the experience was like.
“When I went to Saudi Arabia during the spring semester, coming back was the most tiring thing I’ve ever done because of jetlag. So I needed some time to adjust when coming back here. My teammates were asking me about what the experience was and everything. I was like, ‘It’s pretty cool. I really [loved] it.’”
Photo courtesy of Springfield College Athletics