Feature story: Sami the grand finale
of St. Charles North's 'bergs lineages
By Gary Larsen
If video chatting on Zoom is the only way St. Charles North’s Sami Rydberg can interact with her teammates, the fun-loving North Stars senior has made the most of it.
While trapped inside due to the coronavirus, Rydberg has been all too happy to make those video chats as enjoyable as possible.
“I’ll wear random clothes, makeup, hair — once I wore my homecoming dress,” Rydberg said. “We also listen to our pregame music and just try to keep as much of the normalcy as we can.”
In group settings Rydberg is an alpha, always ready to talk to just about anyone, and her desire to maximize social interaction in a video chat doesn’t surprise North Stars coach Brian Harks.
“When Sami enters a room, you know it,” Harks said. “She’s our social butterfly.”
For the longest time at St. Charles North, a normal soccer season featured both a Rydberg and a Wahlberg trotting out to midfield for pregame introductions. Both families have three soccer-playing sisters whose time at North overlapped, feeding the North Stars a steady diet of quality players for most of the past decade.
“We called them ‘the Bergs’,” Harks said.
There was Elli, Gia, and CeCe Wahlberg, and there was Abby and Hailey Rydberg — five of the six ‘Bergs’ — all of whom have graduated from North.
“I’m the last one,” Sami Rydberg said.
Rydberg watched all the ‘Bergs’ before her play, as the tag-along little sister of Abby and Hailey. Abby is two years older than Hailey, who’s two years older than Sami.
Sami was in seventh grade when Abby was a junior and Hailey was a freshman playing varsity soccer for the North Stars.
“I’d go to their games, and I couldn't imagine that I would ever be out there on that field,” Sami said. “The players looked so much older. But it was great to get to watch that and get to know the coaches and begin to feel like I was part of the program. So that definitely helped me a lot going into it."
Sami made the varsity as a freshman and saw some playing time in the central midfield alongside Hailey, a two-time high school all-American now playing at the University of Iowa.
The youngest sibling in a family holds a unique place. Whether perpetually being accused by older siblings of benefiting from parental pampering, or being excluded or teased, the “baby” of a family can travel a hard road.
Not that Sami didn’t bring some of that on herself when it came to her older sisters.
“When I was really little they did exclude me a lot. I was mama’s baby, and they always thought I was going to tell on them,” Sami said. “And I definitely did. A lot.
“So they kind of left me out a lot. But once I got to middle school that's when I got close to Hailey, and she became like my best friend.”
She was glad to have Sami in the varsity fold in her freshman year, but Hailey wasn’t about to baby her baby sister.
“I was a little harder on her on the field, and I’d push her harder than I’d push the other girls, because I knew she had more to give,” Hailey said. “At times she’d get mad but in the end she understood and knew why I was doing it. I wanted to help her grow as a player.”
Sami was happy to have Hailey there to guide her.
“She’s so mentally tough and as a freshman, I wasn’t. She would tell me ‘You can do it. You’re just telling yourself that you can’t’,” Sami said. “So the best thing that could've happened to me was having Hailey out there with me. She showed me how good and how strong I really am and that as long as I believed it, I could do it.”
What slowly began to emerge was a feisty varsity midfielder. It was a trait likely traceable -- again -- to being the youngest of three sisters. "We definitely picked on her sometimes," Hailey said.
Rydberg scored a game-winning goal in a win over Batavia as an underclassmen and began to feel her oats as a varsity midfielder. By the end of Rydberg’s sophomore year, she was chomping at the bit to become a team leader and looking at a junior year season in which she would shine even brighter as a player.
Of course, that happened with Hailey gone to play for Iowa, but the sisters would miss their time together, even down to the battles they had on the practice field.
“We’d do a lot of scrimmages, and we played the same position, so we’d have to mark each other,” Hailey said. “We both hate losing so let’s say I’d get the ball, and I’d beat her — there might be an extra grab here and there. Both ways, of course. And everyone would sit back and kind of laugh.”
Sami was asked to name her best memory of her time spent in a St. Charles North uniform.
“Being on a team with my sister was the most fun thing I could imagine, so that will always be my favorite part,” she said.
Rydberg had a breakout year as a junior, scoring 13 goals with five assists for a team that went 19-2-1. She scored the game-winning goal in a sectional title game win over rival St. Charles East and at season’s end Rydberg received all-conference and all-sectional honors.
North senior defensive mid Alyssa Kraft and Rydberg have known each other practically since they were toddlers. Kraft was happy to be part of another goal Rydberg scored last year against St. Charles East, the game-winner in a regular-season 2-1 win against the Saints.
“I passed her the ball near the top of the 18 and I think she dribbled through four people before she shot it and it went in off the keeper," Kraft said. "It was such an exhilarating moment for her to have that shot in that game and in that moment against East."
Her junior year was also the year that Rydberg de-committed from her previous decision to play soccer at Indiana State. Even though she’s a Division I talent, Rydberg decided to attend Iowa but to leave soccer behind.
It was a difficult but necessary change of heart. “I see what a big commitment soccer is for Hailey, and I don't think it's one that I want to make,” she said.
Rydberg will major in engineering at Iowa, and she wants to focus all of her energies on that pursuit. But she knows that watching her sister play might not always be easy.
“I know I’ll be thinking about it, because obviously I love soccer, and I've been playing it my whole life,” Rydberg said. “So it will be really weird not playing. But it is what it is, and you've got to make sacrifices. I've been playing soccer for a long time, and I've had fun. But it's time for a new chapter in my life now.”
St. Charles North went 59-4-6 in Rydberg’s three seasons as a varsity player.
“As far as what a coach wants from a center mid she checks all the boxes,” Harks said. “She’s dangerous offensively, and she’s a fierce defender. She’s very smart with the ball; she has excellent field vision; she distributes very well but can also take a defender on 1-v.-1; and she can put the ball in the back of the net. But she’s also consistently the player that makes the play that makes her teammates look good.
“It’s a shame we’re not watching her play, because she’d turn some heads in the state this year.”
of St. Charles North's 'bergs lineages
By Gary Larsen
If video chatting on Zoom is the only way St. Charles North’s Sami Rydberg can interact with her teammates, the fun-loving North Stars senior has made the most of it.
While trapped inside due to the coronavirus, Rydberg has been all too happy to make those video chats as enjoyable as possible.
“I’ll wear random clothes, makeup, hair — once I wore my homecoming dress,” Rydberg said. “We also listen to our pregame music and just try to keep as much of the normalcy as we can.”
In group settings Rydberg is an alpha, always ready to talk to just about anyone, and her desire to maximize social interaction in a video chat doesn’t surprise North Stars coach Brian Harks.
“When Sami enters a room, you know it,” Harks said. “She’s our social butterfly.”
For the longest time at St. Charles North, a normal soccer season featured both a Rydberg and a Wahlberg trotting out to midfield for pregame introductions. Both families have three soccer-playing sisters whose time at North overlapped, feeding the North Stars a steady diet of quality players for most of the past decade.
“We called them ‘the Bergs’,” Harks said.
There was Elli, Gia, and CeCe Wahlberg, and there was Abby and Hailey Rydberg — five of the six ‘Bergs’ — all of whom have graduated from North.
“I’m the last one,” Sami Rydberg said.
Rydberg watched all the ‘Bergs’ before her play, as the tag-along little sister of Abby and Hailey. Abby is two years older than Hailey, who’s two years older than Sami.
Sami was in seventh grade when Abby was a junior and Hailey was a freshman playing varsity soccer for the North Stars.
“I’d go to their games, and I couldn't imagine that I would ever be out there on that field,” Sami said. “The players looked so much older. But it was great to get to watch that and get to know the coaches and begin to feel like I was part of the program. So that definitely helped me a lot going into it."
Sami made the varsity as a freshman and saw some playing time in the central midfield alongside Hailey, a two-time high school all-American now playing at the University of Iowa.
The youngest sibling in a family holds a unique place. Whether perpetually being accused by older siblings of benefiting from parental pampering, or being excluded or teased, the “baby” of a family can travel a hard road.
Not that Sami didn’t bring some of that on herself when it came to her older sisters.
“When I was really little they did exclude me a lot. I was mama’s baby, and they always thought I was going to tell on them,” Sami said. “And I definitely did. A lot.
“So they kind of left me out a lot. But once I got to middle school that's when I got close to Hailey, and she became like my best friend.”
She was glad to have Sami in the varsity fold in her freshman year, but Hailey wasn’t about to baby her baby sister.
“I was a little harder on her on the field, and I’d push her harder than I’d push the other girls, because I knew she had more to give,” Hailey said. “At times she’d get mad but in the end she understood and knew why I was doing it. I wanted to help her grow as a player.”
Sami was happy to have Hailey there to guide her.
“She’s so mentally tough and as a freshman, I wasn’t. She would tell me ‘You can do it. You’re just telling yourself that you can’t’,” Sami said. “So the best thing that could've happened to me was having Hailey out there with me. She showed me how good and how strong I really am and that as long as I believed it, I could do it.”
What slowly began to emerge was a feisty varsity midfielder. It was a trait likely traceable -- again -- to being the youngest of three sisters. "We definitely picked on her sometimes," Hailey said.
Rydberg scored a game-winning goal in a win over Batavia as an underclassmen and began to feel her oats as a varsity midfielder. By the end of Rydberg’s sophomore year, she was chomping at the bit to become a team leader and looking at a junior year season in which she would shine even brighter as a player.
Of course, that happened with Hailey gone to play for Iowa, but the sisters would miss their time together, even down to the battles they had on the practice field.
“We’d do a lot of scrimmages, and we played the same position, so we’d have to mark each other,” Hailey said. “We both hate losing so let’s say I’d get the ball, and I’d beat her — there might be an extra grab here and there. Both ways, of course. And everyone would sit back and kind of laugh.”
Sami was asked to name her best memory of her time spent in a St. Charles North uniform.
“Being on a team with my sister was the most fun thing I could imagine, so that will always be my favorite part,” she said.
Rydberg had a breakout year as a junior, scoring 13 goals with five assists for a team that went 19-2-1. She scored the game-winning goal in a sectional title game win over rival St. Charles East and at season’s end Rydberg received all-conference and all-sectional honors.
North senior defensive mid Alyssa Kraft and Rydberg have known each other practically since they were toddlers. Kraft was happy to be part of another goal Rydberg scored last year against St. Charles East, the game-winner in a regular-season 2-1 win against the Saints.
“I passed her the ball near the top of the 18 and I think she dribbled through four people before she shot it and it went in off the keeper," Kraft said. "It was such an exhilarating moment for her to have that shot in that game and in that moment against East."
Her junior year was also the year that Rydberg de-committed from her previous decision to play soccer at Indiana State. Even though she’s a Division I talent, Rydberg decided to attend Iowa but to leave soccer behind.
It was a difficult but necessary change of heart. “I see what a big commitment soccer is for Hailey, and I don't think it's one that I want to make,” she said.
Rydberg will major in engineering at Iowa, and she wants to focus all of her energies on that pursuit. But she knows that watching her sister play might not always be easy.
“I know I’ll be thinking about it, because obviously I love soccer, and I've been playing it my whole life,” Rydberg said. “So it will be really weird not playing. But it is what it is, and you've got to make sacrifices. I've been playing soccer for a long time, and I've had fun. But it's time for a new chapter in my life now.”
St. Charles North went 59-4-6 in Rydberg’s three seasons as a varsity player.
“As far as what a coach wants from a center mid she checks all the boxes,” Harks said. “She’s dangerous offensively, and she’s a fierce defender. She’s very smart with the ball; she has excellent field vision; she distributes very well but can also take a defender on 1-v.-1; and she can put the ball in the back of the net. But she’s also consistently the player that makes the play that makes her teammates look good.
“It’s a shame we’re not watching her play, because she’d turn some heads in the state this year.”