Under Armour's new campaign features Long Island's Chloe Shimkin
Kidsday reporters Caroline Ryan, Kate Boyle, Kailey Willox and Samantha Newbery play with Under Armour representative Chloe Shimkin, center, at the Rockville Centre Sports Complex on Sunday. Credit: Newsday/Pat Mullooly
On Oct. 21, we had the privilege of meeting and interviewing 12-year-old soccer player, Chloe Shimkin at the Rockville Centre Sports Complex.
Chloe was named to the U.S. Youth Futsal National Team and will be competing in Portugal in December. Besides making the team, Chloe was one of the six youth athletes from across the country to be chosen for the Under Armour outerwear campaign. We asked her how she felt about being featured by Under Armour in the campaign. Chloe said it was a cool experience because her sister has been part of similar projects and it is finally her turn to be part of a big project. Sweatshirts are her favorite piece of the Under Armour outerwear collection because they are comfortable and easy to play soccer in.
The theme of the Under Armour campaign is "Crush the Limits." Under Armour even has a commercial featuring Chloe and it will start airing this week; you can find it on YouTube if you search for Chloe. Her soccer skills are great. We asked Chloe what the theme meant to her. Chloe responded that "Crush the Limits" means to work and train harder than anyone else. She also said that some people may be more skillful than you, but no one can work harder than you. One of Chloe’s biggest goals is to play soccer in college and then on the National Women’s soccer team.
Since Chloe plays for the National Team instead of her local school, we wanted to know if she ever got so overwhelmed that she wanted to quit? She said she has definitely been stressed out before but not enough to quit. This showed us how much passion she has for the sport of soccer.
Chloe makes sure that there is a balance between being a normal kid and being an intense soccer player. She practices four times a week and travels out of New York almost every weekend. Some venues where she has played in recently are Boston and Kansas.
A fun fact about Chloe is that her highest juggle is 538! We asked her what her inspiration was and she said it was her older sister, Jillian, and also watching professional soccer players when she was younger.
Chloe has traveled very far and worked very hard to get where she is today. Her hard work definitely has paid off when she made the National Youth Futsal Team. We asked her what it felt like after the tryouts. She said that it felt really cool and she was relieved because it was a lot of pressure.
We all play for the St. Agnes Girls soccer team in Rockville Centre and we were honored to have Chloe play with us in our annual scrimmage vs. our boys team. Not only was she a great player on the field but also off the field by giving our team great advice to get better. Best of luck to you Chloe!
