How a 9-year-old girl found a confidence-changing role model in Denver soccer star Carson Pickett: “It fills me with hope”

Denver — In their house opener final month at Mile High Stadium, the brand-new Denver Summit FC ladies’s soccer crew of the NWSL went scoreless. But for one girl in attendance, it was a enormous win, as a result of she found a role model.

“I want to be a professional soccer player when I grow up,” Hayden Stine, 9, informed CBS News of assembly Summit star Carson Pickett. “And she was able to do that. And it really fills me with hope that I’m able to do that.”

Stine was born with out most of his proper arm. So when she went to that sport and noticed Pickett, a participant similar to her, Hayden mentioned she noticed one thing in herself.

“Role models make you feel like you can do anything – just like them,” Hayden mentioned.

Since that assembly, Hayden’s “confidence has skyrocketed” her mom, Christina Hayden, revealed.

“At school, on the soccer field, it’s through the roof,” Christina mentioned.

The household mentioned assembly Pickett was actually life-altering. And but, Pickett says the assembly virtually by no means occurred.

“I didn’t want to be known as the girl with one arm that plays soccer,” Pickett informed CBS News. “I just wanted to be known for the girl who plays soccer.”

For years, Pickett says she hid her arm in footage and prevented even speaking about her limb distinction. That was till someday, when she says her mom informed her she was lacking a possibility, and a goal.

Pickett later wrote on social media, “Finding out that the journey is a lot less about myself and a lot more about the hearts I can touch along the way.”

Now, Pickett says she’s taken the “complete opposite” strategy.

“I want to meet all the kids, all the families, all the adults,” Pickett mentioned. “I want to meet everyone that I can.”

In truth, Pickett has now so embraced the role of role model, that this week she stunned Hayden at her crew’s soccer observe.

Pickett plans to remain in contact, and perhaps assist Hayden discover her goal too, as a result of on the subject of role fashions, it takes one to be one.

On being a role model herself someday, Hayden says: “Yes, I am up for it.”