As the Catholic High School Girls Athletic Association’s most valuable soccer player on Long Island, high school senior Keri Bradley is a dedicated athlete.
The Williston Park resident captains soccer teams in New Hyde Park and Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead, where she was the top scorer this season.
And as a volunteer with TOPSoccer, a program that teaches the sport to children and adults with special needs at the Center Street School, she’s also dedicated to giving back to the community that has helped her get so far.
“On the field I’m determined to be there for my teammates and be there for my coaches, and to be the best I can be for my teammates,” Bradley said. “And it’s the same … with my community — I just want to be the best I can be for those other people.”
Bradley started playing soccer at age 4 on intramural teams in New Hyde Park. She worked her way onto premier teams; and when she was in sixth grade, she made an Olympic Development Team with the best young players from around the state.
The competition of the game is what got her hooked, she said.
“I love to be in games. I love to fight for the ball, or just to be in that kind of environment,” Bradley said.
She played on the middle school team at Williston Park’s St. Aidan School, where she and her parents, Shannon and Lawrence Bradley, have been parishioners since she was young.
Bradley said she decided on Sacred Heart for high school because of its strong soccer program.
She has been with some of her New Hyde Park teammates since the beginning. They have become some of her closest friends, she said, and “know each other better than … anyone on the field.”
Playing on so many teams and forming those deep relationships has taught her how to work with many different playing styles.
“It teaches you a lot about how not to be selfish and learn (from) other people,” she said.
Next fall, Bradley will continue her soccer career at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, an NCAA Division I school to which she committed in January.
She said she plans to study medicine and become a physician’s assistant, inspired by her mom’s work as a nurse and the care physician’s assistants gave her grandfather.
Beyond college, Bradley said, she wants to provide medical care to people “underdeveloped” countries around the world, part of a penchant for helping others that she attributes to Sacred Heart.
The school has a 20-hour-a-year community service requirement, but Bradley volunteers about 50 hours a year.
In addition to her work with TOPSoccer, she builds houses with Habitat for Humanity and does breast cancer awareness walks with Sacred Heart.
For Bradley, community service is a way of giving back to the community in Williston Park that has consistently supported her and her family.
For example, she said, people in the village rallied around the Bradleys when her father was deployed for a 16-month tour in Iraq in 2004.
“It just really was amazing to know that everyone was supporting us and helping us through it, so it gave me hope and strength to stay strong and keep going for my dreams,” she said.
