MEET THE AUTHOR
Alexis Hecht
Alexis grew up in Columbia, MO — started her soccer journey playing on a boys team and eventually joined the first all-girls soccer club in her hometown. By high school, she was making the four-hour round trip to St. Louis multiple times a week to train at a higher level. That kind of commitment doesn't happen without people behind you. Alexis has never forgotten the role her family played in making her path possible — the time, the miles, the belief.
That drive took her to the University of Tulsa, where she played D1 soccer and went on to serve as team captain. It was there she understood that what the game teaches — how to lead, how to fail, how to show up for others — is the real lesson.
She has been coaching female athletes for eight years. She wrote Beyond the Game to give her players — and every girl in the game — the conversations she wished she'd had earlier.
“I realized everything I learned on the soccer field translated directly to life. I wanted to give that back, to the game, and to the girls still in it.”
-Alexis Hecht
WHY THIS BOOK
The game teaches you more than soccer.
Beyond the Game was written for the competitive girl who is becoming something remarkable and needs someone in her corner who tells her the truth.
It will push you to own your development, use your voice, and hold yourself to a standard that has nothing to do with anyone else. It will ask you hard questions about who you are, how you lead, and what kind of teammate you choose to be. And it will remind you plainly: you don't magically get better. Growth doesn't happen to you. You make it happen.
It will also give you permission you might not know you needed.
Somewhere along the way, girls in competitive sports get a confusing message: be driven, but not too driven. Chase your goals, but make sure everyone still feels good about it. Want more, just not so much that it makes someone uncomfortable.
This book disagrees.
Be driven. Unapologetically.
Want more. Then go get it.
The work you put in is yours, wear it with pride, never an apology.
“The girl you're becoming, that's yours. No one can build her for you, and no one can take her away. Use this book as a guide, a collection of lessons learned over years of playing, competing, and coaching. Take what resonates. Build on it. Make it your own journey. Own your development.”
-Coach Alexis