Virgen: GoFundMe a tool for club sport athletes like Lexi Osso

These days, with the importance of club sports competition, you must pay to play.

Club soccer fees can be high, ranging from $2,000 to $3,000 each year. But the players and parents know club tournaments are where college recruiters mostly scout.

Lexi Osso, 15, as many club soccer players her age, worked hard at raising money for club fees. However, her mother, Veronica, helped her use a simple and creative tool as well. Osso, who will be a sophomore at Estancia High in the fall, is using GoFundMe.com, the popular crowd-funding website, to raise money for her club fees.

Within 20 days, through the website, she raised $1,000, just $600 from her goal needed to play for the CDA Slammers Huntington Beach girls’ U16 team this year.

“I get very happy,” Osso said of when she sees a donation update on her page. “I’ll jump in the air and I’ll high-five someone around me.”

Osso is the oldest of three children of Veronica, a stay-at-home mother, and Jeremy Osso, a former Costa Mesa High football coach and Estancia alum.

Jeremy Osso works three jobs, as a football assistant coach at University High in Irvine, a behavioral tutor and a security guard at the Orange County Fair. His youngest son JJ, 11, and daughter Nessa, 13, also play sports.

Jeremy Osso is also working toward attaining his teaching credential through National University.

“For a family of five it’s a low income,” Veronica said of the family’s income.

The family remains very grateful for the support through GoFundMe.

“It’s phenomenal,” Veronica Osso said of the donations received.

Playing club soccer is very important for Lexi Osso, as detailed on her GoFundMe page, “Lexi’s Soccer Fees.” She has lofty goals, as she dreams to play on the U.S. Women’s National Team.

Recently she drew more inspiration and a desire to reach that goal when she saw Team USA win the Women’s World Cup. She was a devoted fan, watching every match, when she was zoned in on each minute.

Lexi Osso also wants to land a college scholarship to play for an NCAA Division I team. For now, it’s simply to play for the Slammers. After stints with North Huntington Beach and Newport-Mesa Soccer clubs, she believes she has found a home with Slammers as she continues to rise.

As a freshman, she scored 24 goals and recorded nine assists for Estancia’s JV team in 18 matches, with just one loss. She was named the Eagles’ Offensive MVP.

“Lexi has always been serious about soccer,” Veronica Osso said of her oldest daughter, who began playing soccer when she was 4. “She’s always been that girl running up the sidelines and scoring goals.”

Lexi trains at least two days a week with Slammers and she works on her game mostly everyday as she’s usually seen with a soccer ball around the house in Costa Mesa.

“She’s playing in Flight 1, the highest flight in our league,” said Slammers girls’ U16 Coach Josh Juarez, who is also the men’s assistant coach at Hope University in Fullerton. “She plays forward. She has a lot of speed, very aggressive and hard working. She’s a go-getter. She loves to train. She works hard in training. She likes to be physical on the field. She is one of our scorers on the team we depend on to find us some goals.”

Lexi had been trying to raise money by personally telling her story to friends and family, and local companies. But she said she found it easier to tell her story through GoFundMe, after seeing a Facebook friend use the crowd-funding site.

“I think it can be tough to go around asking everyone to sponsor you,” she said, adding that she didn’t feel embarrassed and she didn’t receive criticism for using the site. “But once people saw it was easy to do — you don’t have to mail it in — it just makes it a lot easier. There were other players looking for sponsors. I have a friend who plays at Mater Dei and he was having trouble with the money. He saw that I was using it and he used it too.”

GoFundMe could become a trend for club sport athletes. The promotional video on the site’s home page encourages users to create a page to raise money to play on sports teams.

“It makes sense for athletes to use it,” Jeremy Osso said. “It’s easy and it’s at their disposal. It was a way to get Lexi’s message to multiple people.”

Lexi Osso said the growing support has caused her to play with more reason.

“It would be tough if I did stop playing, I would let all these people down,” she said. “[The donations] just motivates me more.”