Huntington Beach 11-year-old ‘Fifi’ Garcia having summer to remember
Rob Rennie has been around plenty of top-level talent in his time coaching club soccer for the SoCal Blues.
The Blues had two alumni — midfielder Ashley Sanchez and forward Trinity Rodman — on this year’s United States women’s World Cup squad, as well as Team USA assistant coach Twila Kaufman Kilgore, who became the interim head coach on Thursday.
Rennie has no problem talking about one of his current players in the same breath. Sure, she’s just 11, but the talent is obvious to anyone who watches Huntington Beach’s Fei Fabiola “Fifi” Garcia on the pitch.
“She has a lot of similar characteristics of these professional players, potentially, if she can keep her strength,” Rennie said. “She’s a gifted athlete, and on top of that, she’s genius ... in the way that she understands the game. There’s certain players you don’t really have to coach. You kind of want to let them do their own thing because they know the answers and they improvise. She’s one of those players.”
Fifi recently helped her Blues 2012 Lime squad win the prestigious Surf Cup tournament in San Diego. She had one goal and three assists in a 6-0 win over HB Slammers in the semifinals. She added a beautiful strike against Surf in the final to help her team to a 2-0 win, avenging a State Cup loss earlier this year.
That previous loss against Surf, which came with Fifi nursing a broken toe, still stings a bit. Losing is not the norm at all for the 11-year-old, who is seemingly turning everything she touches to gold.
She helped her Blues team win back-to-back national tournaments in futsal, the fast-paced soccer-adjacent indoor sport. Last month, Fifi’s team won the 11U crown in Kansas at the at the U.S. Youth Futsal National Championships. The following week, it captured gold again in Las Vegas at the U.S. Futsal National Championship in mid-July.
“It was really special, especially to be able to do it with my teammates,” Fifi said. “They’re the same girls that are on my soccer team, and they’re on my futsal team. It’s like we have even more of a connection.”
Earlier this summer, she also won a 400 meters championship in track at the AAU West Coast Nationals in Reno, with her time of 1 minute, 5.30 seconds besting the other 11-year-old girls in the field. And on the softball field, as a second baseman and center fielder, Fifi helped her Corona Angels team make the semifinals of the Alliance Fastpitch National Championships, eventually placing third.
This whirlwind happened before Fifi starts sixth grade at Saints Simon & Jude Catholic School in Huntington Beach.
“It was four or five weeks of just championships, championships, championships,” said Fifi’s dad, Hodari Garcia, a former four-sport athlete at Edison High before graduating in 1998. “And winning almost everything.”
Fifi’s mother, Janice, went to Fountain Valley High. The family is unsure if she will go to her neighborhood school in Edison — which three older brothers also attended — or possibly attend a private school in the Trinity League.
Though her first love is soccer, her future path is largely up to her. She also plays up on her school’s girls’ volleyball and basketball teams.
“She wants to play multiple sports in high school,” Hodari Garcia said. “I don’t know if she’ll do it in college. It would be a tragedy if she can run a 1:05 as an 11-year-old, maybe by the time she’s at Edison or Mater Dei she can run a 53 or something … and you don’t run. And you’re so good at softball, but you don’t play it. It’s tough. It’s going to be up to her, what she wants to do.”
Scoey Peters, the head coach of the Long Beach Sprinters youth track program, has already worked with Fifi for years.
“When I met her, she was already an aggressively competitive child,” Peters said.
Though she has maturing to do when she reaches her high school years and beyond, there are some intangibles that she already possesses.
“Fifi is always going to compete at the top,” Peters said. “That’s kind of her DNA, her mind set. She’s always going to be just a tough competitor. That’s just her. As a coach, that’s something you get as a benefit, that she’s going to be a competitor.”
After this summer of so many highlights, she is ready for the next challenge, though she admits juggling all of the sports can be a challenge.
“It’s really difficult,” Fifi said. “I have to fit in softball during the week, usually by just practicing at home … It’s a really tight schedule.”
Especially at this age, her family wants her to enjoy as much as she can for as long as she can. But that speed, agility and creativity are perhaps the most obvious on the pitch.
She also has her own Instagram account with more than 4,000 followers.
“It’s going to be interesting watching,” said Rennie, who is originally from England and played professional soccer there. “There’s so many things that can happen, and it’s going to come down to her passion, but she is definitely a gifted player. She’s one of those players that you go to these tournaments and the bloke at the entrance, they say, ‘It’s $20.’ You say, ‘Is Fifi playing today?’ And they say, ‘Yeah, Fifi’s in.’
“Then it’s, ‘OK, here’s your $20.’ She’s worth the admission fee.”
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