Naomie Gosal: If Looks Could Kill

There is a photo of Naomie Gosal as a young kid standing on the sidelines watching her dad coach her twin brother Bennett in soccer.

She looks absolutely furious.

Not sad, not left out. Furious. Like she is filing the whole scene away and planning exactly what she is going to do about it.

She was six. She had already tried choir. She had already tried ballet. Neither stuck. Her parents saw the look on her face and knew. Her dad signed her up the next day. She showed up to RGSA in pink cleats and never looked back.

What you would not know from that photo, or from watching her play now, winning balls in the midfield against players twice her age, taping up a purple ankle and refusing to sit out the biggest tournament of her life, is that this is someone who has known since she was five years old that she wants to run a daycare.

Every baby she saw growing up, she wanted to hold it. Dolls everywhere. She started babysitting at twelve. The goal is a Master's in Education and to own an early childhood centre. That dream has been there longer than the soccer has.

Understanding Naomie Gosal means holding both of those things at the same time.

The House That Built Her

The Gosal household runs on soccer and always has. Dad Gary started playing at eight, coming up through Kerrisdale and Kensington Soccer Club. He played the highest level available at the time. No BCSPL, no provincial pipelines, just finding the best competition and going after it. He passed that mentality to all three of his kids.

Mom Sharline is a teacher by training, though she stepped away from the classroom when the twins were born and stayed home through all three kids. She homeschooled them during COVID, which she will tell you was enough to make any teacher consider retirement. She is still deeply connected to the education world, and that background shapes how she thinks about her daughter's future in ways that go well beyond soccer. She has been the engine behind the scenes: finding private trainers, connecting Naomie with university coaches, organizing a schedule that would overwhelm most families.

Bennett, Naomie's fraternal twin, older by one minute, and he will never let her forget it, has been her primary rival since before either of them could drive a ball past the six-yard box. They watch each other's game film. They give each other honest, sometimes brutal, feedback. He taught her how to hit a long ball properly, which she admits was never her strong suit. Both are in the BC Soccer provincial program and both play in the BCSPL at Fusion.

Their younger brother plays too. With three kids on three different teams, it is impossible for both parents to be everywhere at once. VEO footage and photos from the sideline fill in the gaps. But at home it all comes together. Soccer in the backyard, film sessions at the kitchen table, three kids all competing and all pushing each other. Gary coached Naomie's team for a stretch at RGSA. That is what growing up in this house looked like, and it built something in her. A belief that she belonged, and a relentless drive to prove it.

Always Looking for the Next Level

Every move Naomie has made in her career has followed the same pattern: she finds the ceiling, and then she goes looking for a higher one.

At RFC, Sherrick was the first coach who really pushed her. He believed in her before she believed in herself, and he held her to a standard she had to grow into. A BCSPL coach noticed her work ethic during a game and invited her to the TSS academy. She started in the Total Soccer feeder program. She was not the best player in the room. The other girls had been training together for years. Naomie had to catch up. Individual training, soccer labs, long summer sessions with her brothers, her family showing up the way they always did. She earned her spot and became one of the better players on that team.

But TSS did not travel as much. A local tournament here, an Easter weekend event there. Naomie was already thinking about post-secondary, about being seen by scouts, about playing against competition that would force her to grow. She loves the girls at TSS. Some of them are still her best friends. But the path she was chasing was not going to start there.

So when Jason Jordan invited her to train with Fusion in San Diego at fourteen, she went. Even though part of her was terrified.

Part of that fear had a name: Tessa Langelaan. They had played against each other at intake. Naomie remembered bumping into her on the field. Tess grabbed her jersey and got heated, the way fierce competitors do. Naomie walked away convinced this girl hated her.

In San Diego, they roomed together. Tess turned out to be, in Naomie's words, "a complete teddy bear off the pitch."

The toughest player on the field who turns out to be the warmest person off it. It is a pattern on this team. And nobody fits it better than Naomie herself.

She met the O8s. She went to Surf Cup. She saw the scouts in the stands. Jordan told her she would have a real shot at post-secondary if she came over. Her brother Bennett was already there. Leaving TSS was hard. But Naomie made the call, because she has always chosen the harder room.

The Number Six

When Naomie moved up to the Fusion 08s, coached by John Ribeiro, he trusted her to take over the holding midfield role. The number six. It is the position you give to one of your toughest and smartest players. The one who sits in front of the back line, wins the ball in traffic, organizes everyone around her, and never stops communicating.

"You have to guide your players and tell them where to go," she says. "Communication is the most important part."

She was fifteen, playing up a year with the O8s. When the team moved into the Women's open Premier League, she was lining up against women in their thirties. One opponent called her Gen Z on the pitch during a game, clearly unimpressed that someone so young was out there.

Naomie found it funny. She still does.

She was also the youngest player ever called up to Altitude FC. She and Alix Boogemans took the ferry over together. That trip is when they started getting close. Training with senior women opened her eyes to what the next level actually looked like.

Every time someone put her in a room where she was the youngest, the smallest, the least experienced, she came out better. She kept looking for harder rooms.

The Third Goal

The Fusion O8s made the Provincial Cup final against Surrey United.

Before the game, both coaches were in tears during the pre-game speech. Naomie says she had never seen coaches cry.

She scored the third goal in a 3-0 win. She rarely scores, and when that one went in, the reaction from her teammates told you everything about what kind of group this is. Naomie still watches that video.

At a game earlier this season, you could see it again. Naomie scored, and Ruby Ambardar, the team's fullback and the other half of what they call the Indian duo, both having Indian dads and white moms, made the longest run of anyone to get to her. Sprinting from her position, arms already in the air before she even arrived, pulling Naomie into a full hug. Ruby is one of the most supportive players on this team. She celebrates everyone, every time, and that energy is contagious.

The Provincial Cup was theirs, and with it, a ticket to the 2025 PDP Championship in Vaughan.

Tylenol and Tape

A week before Nationals, Naomie sprained her ankle badly in an exhibition game. She went to the hospital. They told her she should not play more than a half.

She loaded up on Tylenol, taped it up, and played full games.

The Championship in Vaughan brought together the top youth clubs from across Canada. Fusion had a tough draw from the start. The game that stays with her most is the one against the Quebec side. Three red cards, studs-up tackles, opponents swearing at them in French, not knowing Naomie understood every word.

"That was probably one of the most intense games I've played in my life," she says. "But it was fun to play. I liked it."

She liked it. That is the part worth sitting with. The aggression, the physicality, the chaos. She did not just survive it. She wanted more of it. This is someone who babysits toddlers on weekends and dreams of running a daycare, and on the pitch she is looking for the most hostile environment she can find and thriving in it.

The Doors That Opened

The same names keep surfacing in these Fusion stories. Brent Branker, spotting something in young players going all the way back to RGSA. Cassandra Sammarco, alongside him from the grassroots level up, leaving her own mark. Knowing both were part of the Fusion world made Naomie's transition easier. Familiar faces in a new environment.

Jason Jordan works quietly. He put in a word with the O8 coach before Naomie had even committed to the move. That conversation opened a door.

"He gave me that hope that I can play and how good of a player I was," she says. "He likes to hide that soft spot in him. He does a lot for us, but he does it under the scene."

And Sherrick, who first coached her at RFC, went on to coach her at the Canada Women's Nations Cup. Now she coaches alongside him at Fusion. Learning from someone who has been in her corner since the beginning.

"I wasn't as confident coming into Fusion," Naomie says. "Now I have so much more confidence because of them. They developed me as a person."

That part is not throwaway. She means it literally. She says that before Fusion, she could not hold a real conversation with an adult, could not look a coach in the eye and talk through a problem. Now she can. The confidence she built on the pitch carried into everything else.

Follow Your Gut

Naomie has had offers from Canadian universities. She has not committed to any of them.

That is not indecision. That is clarity.

She is working toward an early childhood education program. The first real step toward the daycare, the degree, all of it. The university she picks has to fit both the soccer and the academics, and the academics are not negotiable. Her mom, the teacher, makes sure of that.

"I'm hoping that soccer will always be a part of my life," Naomie says, "but it's important that I have my degree and what I still want to stick to, which is working with kids."

Most of her teammates are a year older and have already committed or are close to it. Naomie has more time, and she is using it, because the decision is more complicated for her. She is not just choosing where to play. She is choosing where to build the future she has been planning since she was five years old. She and Bennett are hoping to land at the same school, which adds one more variable to an already layered equation.

If she could go back and talk to her younger self, she knows what she would say.

"Always take your time when making a hard decision to really think it through. Find two or three adults who have your best interest in mind and ask for their advice to get different points of view. Most importantly, always follow your gut and keep working hard to achieve your personal goals."

The girl in the pink cleats who was furious on the sideline grew into a holding midfielder who thrives in chaos, who plays through injuries, who seeks out the hardest room she can find and refuses to be the weakest person in it. She also grew into someone whose face lights up around toddlers, who has dreamed about her own daycare since before she ever laced up a boot, and who is building a life that has always been about more than soccer.

She is uncommitted. She is patient. She is following her gut.

And if you have watched her play, you know. Trusting Naomie Gosal's gut has a pretty strong track record.