Serra Fiesa-Rich, shown in a 2021 Class A South game defending against Scarborough’s Maeve Davis, played three seasons of high school soccer for Thornton Academy. As a senior, Rich opted to train with a professional women’s team in Spain instead of playing high school soccer. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Yabeserra Fiesa-Rich, a 17-year-old from Saco, is playing soccer with a professional women’s team.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Four months after graduating from Thornton Academy, Fiesa-Rich is now training with women 10 years her senior for Brooklyn Football Club of the new USL Super League.

“Even now, I’m already a better player,” Fiesa-Rich said. “I get to train with insanely talented players who have had much more expansive careers than me.”

Fiesa-Rich’s journey includes living in five countries on three continents, with soccer stops in Maine, Massachusetts, England, Spain, and this summer in Greenville, South Carolina.

While most of her American peers, including former Seacoast United Maine teammates, were targeting playing in college, Serra, as she is known, went in a different direction.

Her intent from a young age was to play professionally, and she was willing to challenge herself in foreign countries to make that happen.

“She’s definitely flashy, and you can’t discount her bravery,” is the way Steve Twombly, her former coach at Seacoast United puts it. “This is a girl who has consistently left comfortable surroundings to try to fight for something they want.”

Fiesa-Rich played at Thornton Academy for three seasons, scoring 10 goals as a sophomore and earning second-team All-SMAA honors as a junior.

She opted to skip her high school senior season so she could train with a professional woman’s team in Malaga, Spain. Prior to living on her own in Spain, she spent the summer training in England with Burnley FC Ladies and then Manchester United’s U21 women’s team.

“I really wanted this to happen so I just went into everything with an open mind,” Fiesa-Rich said. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘what if this doesn’t work out?’ Even if I had gone and it was not what I was expecting, it was a stepping stone and I was willing to see it as that, even if it was not successful.”

Travel and learning to be comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings are two staples of Fiesa-Rich’s life.

Born in Ethiopia, Serra was adopted by Lydia and Joshua Rich when she was 2. A year later, the family moved to South Africa. Lydia Rich says Serra “showed great signs of being an athlete” at a young age, but it wasn’t until the family returned to the United States, moving to Jefferson in Lincoln County, that she began playing soccer as an 8-year-old.

At 10, Serra joined Seacoast United Soccer, generally regarded as the top club team in Maine. When she was 13, after the family moved to Saco, she switched to the FC Stars, a club based in Lancaster, Massachusetts.

At that point, she was following a familiar path of trying to move up the club sport ladder.

“As a parent of a child that’s playing a club sport, you just get bombarded with the message that, ‘This is the pathway. You have to do this or that or you’re never going to make it,'” Lydia Rich said. “But it comes at such a financial cost and time cost.”

Lydia Rich said the family worried that choosing a different path might be a mistake. Ultimately, they decided to support their daughter’s professional aspirations.

“We tried to teach our kids that it’s worth it, making the big jump,” said Lydia Rich. “Things can be hard and wonderful at the same time.”

When Fiesa-Rich found out she was officially one of two young players signed to an Academy contract by Brooklyn FC, she said she ran downstairs to tell her mom the news.

“Then immediately I started crying,” she said. “It’s just a surreal moment because my path hasn’t been the normal one most players in the United States take, and to have it pay off and to be essentially living my dream – I was in shock. I was shaking and a little bit relieved, too, because I had given so much.”

Fiesa-Rich is one of eight defenders listed on Brooklyn FC’s 24-player roster. The first-year league is one of two Tier One professional women’s leagues in the U.S., along with the more established NWSL.

Fiesa-Rich has not appeared in any games yet for Brooklyn, which is 3-2-1 in the eight-team league, and it is unlikely she will this season. As an Academy signing, she is not being paid, but is training with the team on a daily basis. She hasn’t been in uniform yet on a game day but is eligible to play in league competition.

“Basically, I’m really here just to learn as much as possible, and I’m surrounded by so many talented player and really just trying to learn as much as  I can and grow as a player,” Fiesa-Rich said.

Brooklyn Coach Jess Silva, a native of Montreal, previously coached seven seasons in France. She said in Europe it is “absolutely common practice,” to have young players train with older players to enhance their development.

“Serra is really good on the ball. She’s left-footed. Those players are rare to come by in football,” Silva said. “So she has a lot of potential and is very, very young and she needs some development time.”

Silva said Fiesa-Rich has a detailed individual development plan.

“You definitely have to have a growth mindset, because you know you’re probably not going to touch the field (in a game) often if at all,” Silva said.

Fiesa-Rich will need to develop as an athlete in terms of strength and conditioning and “her decision-making off the ball and on the ball is what she needs to work on, which is very typical of players her age,” Silva said. “She has that willingness to learn and grow and get out of her comfort zone.”

Fiesa-Rich’s technical skills with the ball are a strength, according to Twombly, her former coach.

“She has a lot of vocabulary,” Twombly said. “By that, I mean, she’s going to use a lot of different things in order to manipulate the defender in front of her.”

In addition to trying to catch up to her more experienced teammates on the field, Fiesa-Rich is responsible for the basics of adult life off the pitch.

“Waking up in the morning, going grocery shopping, getting my own food prepared, it can be a lot, but it’s also not my first time having to do that,” Rich said. “Playing in Spain, I had to do the same thing. This is definitely easier to get around and ask for help.”