By the time she was seven, Clelia Castro-Malaspina (’01) already lived and breathed soccer. Saturdays were for practice, and Sundays were for games. Every weekend meant lacing up her cleats, slipping shin guards into place, and hustling to the Municipal field. She played in Tenafly’s rec league, proudly donning a gold jersey–fitting, since gold often meant first place and her team played like champions. Every game day, she filled her water bottle to the brim and stepped onto the field with focus and fire. She was small, yes, but her passion was unmistakable. What Clelia didn’t know then, as she sprinted down grassy sidelines and celebrated goals with teammates, was that her love for soccer would grow into something even greater. Years later, that same fire would lead her to write a book, Girls with Goals, that celebrates the spirit, strength, and stories of girl soccer players.
After playing in the rec league in elementary school, Castro-Malaspina earned a spot on the travel team in middle school and then made the varsity team as a freshman when she began high school. When her senior year arrived, she was awarded the title of captain. Throughout her four years in high school, the girls’ soccer team became her family. “Those girls remain my best friends to this day,” she said.
“I loved sports. I just loved athletes—Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson,” she said. Female sports heroes were harder to find. However, that all changed with the 1999 Women’s World Cup. “This team of women came through–they were just so cool, so good at soccer and so charming,” Castro-Malaspina recalled. “They wore sports bras and ponytails, just like me and my friends, and it completely blew me away.” She was 16, heading into her junior year of high school, attending the opening match at what was then called Giants Stadium (now Met Life) with her fellow friends. That day changed Castro-Malaspina, “It made me sense my own power for the first time as a young girl. It just flipped a switch in me,” Castro-Malaspina said. “To this day, when I see those women on TV, I get this whoosh of a feeling, like I’m 16 again.”
After graduating from Tenafly High School, Castro-Malaspina attended Boston College; however, she missed soccer tryouts for the school’s club team. Although she was disappointed, she decided to choose a different route and join the rec league. “My two roommates, freshman year, both played high school soccer. So we kind of all bonded over that,” she added.
Once she finished college, she headed to law school then to New York City and spent her free time playing soccer in an adult league with friends and family. At that point in her life, a writing career was far from her mind. “I did not think of myself as someone who would have a writing career,” Castro-Malaspina said. Though she once dreamed of writing children’s books when she was in elementary school, those early creative ambitions faded under the weight of her family’s STEM-orientated background. “My parents were doctors. My brothers were an economics, finance and engineering majors, and my sister’s an accountant,” she said. “We were very much a math and science type of household, and I was not that at all.” Instead, Castro-Malaspina found herself drawn to English, history, and the arts. She referred to herself as “the pink sheep of the family.” Still, without role models in creative fields, she struggled to see writing as a serious career path. “It wasn’t really presented to me as a viable option,” she said, “That came later.”
The idea for her book came while watching a Women’s World Cup game with her five-year-old daughter. As they watched the tournament together, Clelia realized just how deeply this sport lived with her. When a retrospective aired about a little-known moment in women’s soccer history, she found herself surprised and curious. She began reading, only to discover there were hardly any books that captured the full history of women’s soccer, especially for young readers.
That discovery lit a new fire. Castro-Malaspina saw an opportunity to combine her passion for the game with her professional experience as a literary agent in children’s publishing. She hesitated at first, “I actually got scared of doing it because it was something I loved so much that I was scared that I wouldn’t do it justice,” she said. However, deep down, she knew it was something she must do—and with a blink of an eye, Girls with Goals was born.
Castro-Malaspina feels that the history of women’s soccer is not just about a game, but about resilience and determination in the face of discrimination. Castro-Malaspina explained, “Just knowing the history of something you love is entertaining. But it’s also powerful.” The first women who wanted to play soccer one hundred fifty years ago were literally being chased off the field by men who saw soccer as a sacred male space. At the time, many believed that women were too fragile to play and that participating in a contact sport could damage their reproductive systems, threatening what society deemed their primary value: bearing and raising children. In the later 1800s and early 1900s, stepping onto a soccer field was a radical act of defiance of giant cultural norms that considered female athletes weak and out of place. Yet, women persisted. Generation after generation, they fought simply for the right to play, to be taken seriously, and to be given the same opportunities men had always enjoyed.
That persistence has paid off. What began as a countercultural fight has grown into one of the most powerful movements in sports. “The amount of money being poured into the NWL right now and the amount of people showing up is just incredible,” Castro-Malaspina said, “And it’s all because women back then pushed and pushed to get more, not just for themselves, but for the women and girls who would follow in their footsteps.”
Looking back, it feels almost a full circle. The same girl who once threw on her gold rec Jersey and filled her water bottle to the brim every Sunday now fills the pages of a book with the stories of women who shaped the soccer game. What started as childhood weekends on Municipal field in Tenafly grew into a lifelong passion—and now into a book that ensures those who fought for the sport will never be forgotten. In Girls with Goals, Clelia Castro-Malaspina honors not just her own love of soccer, but the countless women whose determination made it possible for girls everywhere to step onto the field and know they belong.
