Hi, I'm Kyah Simon and I'm going Back to School with Student Edge.
What were you like as a teenager?
As a teenager I think I was fairly busy, obviously.
I started professional football at a young age, around the age of 15, 16.
So, I had to balance a lot of my time between my sporting life and my school life as well.
And then obviously my social life with my peers but I feel like I was very busy from
a young age.
But, you know, I was doing what I loved, so it didn't seem like I was wasting my time
on things I wasn't enjoying.
What about in the classroom?
Were you always kind of waiting to get out onto the soccer field?
Or did you kind of enjoy your time in class too?
I think I was definitely one of the more sporty people.
Yep.
In my year.
I loved PE and getting out there and really just running around and enjoying my time with
my peers and my friends on the pitch, and whether that be softball or football or touch
footy or whatever it was, I was out there playing some kind of sport.
In the classroom, obviously, I think I was there and I was definitely listening and taking
in a lot of what our teachers were teaching us, but I definitely was chomping at the bit
to get out there and be playing some kind of sport when I wasn't in the classroom.
I understand you came from a touch footy family, right?
Like a rugby family.
So, how did soccer kind of become your sport of choice?
Yeah, so I got brought up in a rugby league family.
Both my dad and my older brother played rugby league.
It was my next door neighbour, actually, that introduced me to football, or to soccer, and
we basically went down to our local soccer club, Quakers Hill Soccer Club, and as an
eight-year-old girl I signed up to both that and rugby league that year, and gave them
both a go.
And I really fell in love with the game of football from that age onwards.
The rest is kind of history.
But that's kind of interesting because being a professional sportsperson is not guaranteed
to anyone, you know?
It can be a difficult kind of career to forge.
Were your parents on board with this from the get go?
Or were they trying to get you to study something as a back-up?
I think they definitely supported me from a young age.
I think one of the fondest memories I have- one of my first memories of football, was only
a couple of sessions in to my training sessions, as an eight-year-old.
I went home and said to my parents I want to play for Australia one day.
And obviously as an eight-year-old girl, my parents were probably thinking, you know,
I'm crazy.
But from the get go they knew I was determined, even as such a youngster I was.
I guess setting that in stone at that age.
I think they knew that I was serious about it and having, I guess, a lot of outsiders
saying, "Kyah is quite talented at football; she could go a long way."
I think that also encouraged I guess the dream of pursuing that and becoming a professional
footballer.
So, my family were definitely there from day one and have supported me to date.
So what happened when you broke your leg at 15?
Did you think, "Well, this is it then"?
Like, "This is over."
Or, were you able to go, "I can recover from this."
It was definitely a challenging time for me.
I was 15 years of age and suffered my first major injury in the broken leg.
So, I was out of the game for six months.
I think the outside noise of the negativity, and people saying that I would never come
back really motivated me and drove me to prove those people wrong.
A lot of people would comment, saying, "Kyah's washed up.
She'll never play for Australia."
Things like that.
And hearing that as a 15-year-old, I think that challenges you within itself, not to
mention the physical setback of having the injury initially.
I think that's really what kept me determined and focussed to want to come back bigger and
stronger; to pursue the dream I'd set those seven or eight years ago.
The idea of being called washed up at 15.
So you were trying to prove them wrong effectively and say, "No, that's not the case"?
Yeah, pretty much.
There's nothing more that I love than proving people wrong and proving people that I can
achieve something or I can do it if I really set my mind to it, I will do it.
Yeah, definitely hearing that and I guess that sense of I hadn't yet fulfilled my dream
as a 15-year-old.
I hadn't yet represented the country and really, I guess, played to my potential.
I still hadn't made the pro level yet.
So, there was so much more that I had to achieve and I wasn't gonna stop until I did that.
Well, you got there.
You got to play in the Women's World Cup.
Can you tell us a little about what that experience was like?
Not only to play it, but to make such a mark, with the whole team as well.
Yeah, my first FIFA Women's World Cup, Senior World Cup, in 2011, in Germany.
It was a memorable one.
We played Brazil for our first game in the group stages.
There's a lot of daunting factors around that.
But at the same time, excitement, and as an 18-year-old going to your first World Cup,
was very exciting for me.
As cliched as it sounds, it was a dream come true.
That's kind of where I set my mind so many years previously, before that.
To be there in that moment in stadiums filled with 30, 40,000 people, playing the game that
you love on a world stage against the world's best players, you really can't ask for a bigger
occasion and a bigger challenge than to go out there representing your country and doing
what you love.
Are you glad to be kind of a part of an era where women's football and women's sport in
general is getting more attention?
Or, do you still feel there is still that barrier?
We've still got a ways to go before we're really, truly kind of embraced, the way we
should be.
Yeah, I think it's a bit of both.
I think we still have a long way to go but at the same time, we have broken down some
barriers and come leaps and bounds from when I first came into the women's national team
in 2008.
So, it's been a long time.
I'm definitely- I feel very privileged that I'm a part of this era where there is a motion
in movement, whether it be just women's football or women's sport in general in Australia.
What is it like to be a playable character in FIFA?
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
I mean, when people send me videos or photos of them playing as me or critical goals that
I can score on FIFA obviously, that's pretty cool and I never would have thought that I'd
be a playable character on a video game.
Both my brothers are gamers and yeah, to have them playing me as a character is something
pretty cool.