{"id":6481,"date":"2014-04-30T14:23:09","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T18:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=6481"},"modified":"2014-05-21T15:25:07","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T19:25:07","slug":"aurora-athlete-rio-speller-drews-signs-to-us-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-athlete-rio-speller-drews-signs-to-us-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora athlete Rio Speller-Drews signs to US college"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Doner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another one of Aurora\u2019s young athletes if off to play sports and study in the US.<\/p>\n

Rio Speller-Drews, an 18-year-old soccer star, recently committed to the College of Charleston on a soccer scholarship just in time for the upcoming season.<\/p>\n

Originally, the soon-to-be-graduated Aurora High student was committed to a soccer scholarship with Old Dominion College, but a coaching change at the school left her looking for a Plan B.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started to look around at other schools and Charleston was just a really great fit for me, so I signed my letter of intent and now I\u2019m attending that school,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great the first time when I signed with Old Dominion and then I think even better the second time when I knew everything was finalized and I actually signed my letter of intent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that things are ready to go for the upcoming season, Speller-Drews said she is excited to get things going with her new school and team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re in the process of rebuilding their team, so I\u2019ll be in the third recruiting class for this coach and it\u2019s a really great recruiting class coming in, so the soccer program is definitely going to be going in an upward direction,\u201d she said. \u201cThe school itself is really well known and is quite good academically and they offer some great programs and give me a great education.\u201d<\/p>\n

She will be leaving for South Carolina at the beginning of July to take some summer courses to lighten the load for when the season starts in the fall and will be studying for a degree in exercise science.<\/p>\n

Throughout much of her life, Speller-Drews developed her soccer skills at the local level with the Aurora Youth Soccer Club, participating in just about every program and playing each year except for her last.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019m naturally a pretty dedicated person, but I have to say, at the time I think I was playing for Aurora (AYSC) and a few of the coaches really pushed me to keep going,\u201d she said. \u201cThey just kept saying, \u2018things are coming your way and it will all fall into place\u2019. They kept me motivated and offered me extra help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last season she played with the Burlington Youth Soccer Club, where she won the Ontario Cup with her team and also excelled at a few American showcases along the way. She has been keeping a keen eye on some of the soccer being played south of the border to get a feel for what she\u2019ll be walking into.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty physical. I think that will be my biggest challenge. The girls are just really strong down there. I need to start lifting the weights, I guess,\u201d she laughed.<\/p>\n

But it hasn\u2019t all been easy for Speller-Drews, which she said makes it all worth the while.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of disappointment along the way,\u201d she said. \u201cI was released from the provincial program a few times and we were talking about it the other day, if I hadn\u2019t gone back after being released for the third time, none of this would have happened. It was a lot of dedication and taking the disappointments and working from them and making myself better\u2026I kept putting in a lot of hard work and it eventually paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in a soccer household, Speller-Drews said she would like to develop a career within soccer or sport in general. A goal after university is to try and find some playing opportunities overseas.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy whole family is pretty into soccer and I guess they saw I had the potential,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another one of Aurora\u2019s young athletes if off to play sports and study in the US.
\nRio Speller-Drews, an 18-year-old soccer star, recently committed to the College of Charleston on a soccer scholarship just in time for the upcoming season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/2014-05-01-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1Gx","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 09:52:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}