Milwaukee girls soccer team highlights culture, love of the sport

MILWAUKEE - At Riverside University High School, the girls soccer team is in a league of their own. 

What they're saying:

"It's very fun, very energetic," said Hser Mu Nar, Riverside senior defender.

"We’re all pretty close, like we all get along pretty well," said Eh Moo Gay Paw, Riverside senior forward.

As you can tell, the Tigers are a close-knit group.

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Many of these girls have played together since freshman year, but they have much more than soccer in common. 

"We’re another family," said Eh Gay, Riverside senior goalkeeper. "Some of us are related. Some of us aren’t."

Dig deeper:

Riverside has a pretty significant Karen population.

The Karen are an ethnic group who come from the mountainous region of Southeast Asian, mainly Myanmar, which is formerly known as Burma, along with Thailand. However, hundreds of thousands of Karen have fled their homes due to religious and ethnic persecution. 

"We come from all over," said Eh Moo. "We come from like, either Burma or Thailand, and then we don’t really have a country of our own. I guess you could say like we come from like a refugee camp, so we’re like all over the place."

For Eh Moo Gay Paw, Hser Mu Nar and Eh Gay, their families immigrated in the early to mid-2000s to Milwaukee with other Karen refugees to join an already growing Karen population in town. 

"I know it was tough for them," said Hser Mu. "I remember my dad telling me on the way here, my mom was crying since she was leaving her hometown where she grew up and everything."

"My parents, my mom grew up in the mountains," said Eh Moo. "My dad was born in Burma. It wasn’t easy, but we had help."

Years later, their love for soccer brought them all together, and now, the team boasts quite a few Karen. 

"It was easy since we spoke the same language, had the same background and culture," said Hser Mu. "It was easy for me to get along with them and just be friends with them."

On the pitch, speaking Karen is an added advantage.

"We all speak it," said Eh Gay. "It does help us on the field as well because we can just yell out each other’s name."

And it's clear, this trio takes pride in who they are.

"At first, people would ask us like where we come from, who we are, what we speak," said Eh Moo. "We’re not very known, so we don’t really take offense to it."

What we know:

In turn, they enjoy teaching others about the Karen.

"I don’t have the actual flag, but this is what our flag looks like," said Eh Moo. "There’s red, white and blue and there’s like a tiger because we’re called the tigers and it represents our school."

"It has sunrays," said Hser Mu. "The nine sunrays represent the nine different regions we come from and in the middle of the sunray, there’s a frog drum which is our traditional instrument."

The girls also celebrate Karen New Year and go to summer school to stay connected to their roots. 

"If we stick more to our culture, there’s going to be more people that understand us and what we have gone through and our past," said Eh Gay.

Consider their head coach Vincent Goldstein one of those people. 

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"I’ve learned a lot," said Vincent Goldstein, Riverside girls soccer coach. "First of all, culturally, I know they’re people that are very vibrant. They’re a population of people that really enjoy soccer. Soccer’s really big among the Karen population. They’re a lot of my favorite students. They’re really good kids."

That's the beauty of being on a team because the assists come not only on the field, but also in life. 

"I would have a lot less life experience if I wouldn’t have met them," said Goldstein. "Here at Riverside, we really embrace the Karen population. We want more of them to come here, so we do what we can to try to promote them and try to make this place welcoming to everyone, but including the Karen."

And for these girls, their pact will be an everlasting one. 

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