FAIRHOPE, Ala. — For rising Fairhope High School senior Olivia Leathers, soccer has always meant more than competition. It’s where she finds calm, builds lasting friendships and pushes herself to improve every day. Now that dedication has earned her a spot on one of Alabama’s biggest high school stages.
Leathers has been chosen to represent the South Team in the Alabama North-South Girls Soccer All-Star Game, an annual showcase that brings together many of the state’s top rising seniors before their final prep seasons begin. The game sits at the center of the AHSAA’s summer all-star calendar in Montgomery, where the state’s governing body for high school athletics gathers its best underclassmen from football to volleyball to soccer for a week of competitions that college coaches and scouting services watch closely.
“It’s obviously really exciting because there’s a lot of good players and good exposure,” Leathers said. “I’m training to give my best potential, so hopefully it works out.”
The Fairhope midfielder spent her summer preparing for the matchup, training several times a week at the Daphne Sports Complex. Her focus has centered on sharpening the technical side of her game — getting more touches on the ball, working on her shot and continuing to grow as a midfielder. The complex on the Eastern Shore has become a summer hub for club players from across Baldwin and Mobile counties, and its fields host the Union 10 programs Leathers has come up through.
“I’ve been training probably two or three times a week, just getting really good touches and getting shots up, getting prepared for the game because I play midfield,” she said.
A one-practice experiment
The all-star format presents its own challenge, since players from rival programs across the state get only one practice together before taking the field as teammates. Chemistry that normally takes a preseason to build has to appear in a single session, which puts a premium on players who can read the game rather than rely on rehearsed combinations.
“It’s going to be a little bit different because obviously we go head-to-head,” Leathers said. “Now we’re going to have to work together, but we all know each other, so it’ll be good.”
She’s especially looking forward to lining up alongside opponents she has competed against for years — and, in some cases, played beside through club soccer with Union 10. The Mobile Bay area’s club circuit means many of the state’s top players already share fields in the spring and summer, even while they wear different colors for their high schools in the winter season.
“Obviously the game itself is going to be really fun,” she said. “But also just the experience of playing with all these girls that I probably wouldn’t get the opportunity to play with is really exciting for me.”
A game that erases everything
Soccer has been part of Leathers’ life since she was seven years old, and years of development through Fairhope High School and Union 10 have shaped her into the player she is today. For her, the sport has become something bigger than competition. Baldwin County’s soccer community — with Fairhope, Daphne, Spanish Fort and Gulf Shores among the coast’s consistent contenders — has produced a steady pipeline of players who train year-round on the same complexes and face each other from youth leagues upward.
“I really just love the game itself,” she said. “If I had a bad day, coming to the field, seeing my teammates and coaches, it just erases everything.”
That love of the game has fueled a bigger goal: playing soccer at the collegiate level. Leathers has attended college ID camps, competed in showcase events with Union 10 and already started building relationships with college coaches. The ID camp circuit — where college staffs run sessions and watch prospects in small-sided play — has become the standard route for Gulf Coast players hoping to extend their careers beyond high school.
“It’s definitely been a process,” she said. “I’m hoping it works out.”
She credits her family and coaches for helping get her to this point. “My family is at every game,” Leathers said. “Even if I got injured during high school season, they’re still there supporting me. My coaches have always supported me too — even coaches I don’t play for anymore still check in to see how I’m doing.”
While the all-star nod is an individual honor, Leathers knows she’s also representing Fairhope, Union 10 and the broader soccer community along Alabama’s Gulf Coast. “I’m out here working hard,” Leathers said. “I put in the work, and my game proves it.”
As she prepares to take the field in Montgomery, Leathers hopes the experience marks another step toward playing in college — and that it helps put a spotlight on the level of talent coming out of South Alabama. “I definitely think the South has plenty of talent, but we don’t always get the same recognition as some of the other regions,” she said. “There are so many great players down here who work just as hard and compete at a high level. Hopefully, as more showcases and opportunities come our way, people will continue to see just how much talent South Alabama has.”
The Gulf Coast contingent
Leathers is one of 14 players from Mobile and Baldwin counties chosen for this year’s game, reflecting the depth of girls soccer talent across the Gulf Coast. The selection list reads like a map of the region’s strongest programs, from public powers to private school contenders:
Gabriela Aufmuth, Orange Beach — Forward. The Makos forward comes from one of the newest soccer programs on the coast, in a beach town that has rapidly built a competitive side.
Zoe Beckham, Spanish Fort — Center Back. The Toros’ back line anchor from the Eastern Shore program.
Kennadie Boatman, Mobile Christian — Center Back/Midfielder. A two-way piece for the Leopards.
Emily Burt, Baker — Midfielder/Forward. The Hornets’ flexible attacker.
Avery Davidson, Cottage Hill Christian — Midfielder.
Olivia Hicks, Daphne — Goalkeeper. The DHS keeper gives the South a proven last line of defense.
Olivia Leathers, Fairhope — Midfielder/Forward.
Isabelle Marshall, St. Paul’s Episcopal — Goalkeeper. A second goalkeeper on the roster from the Mobile private school power.
A.G. McKee, St. Paul’s Episcopal — Midfielder.
Tatiana Mejia, Baker — Center Back/Midfielder.
Maria Pappas, W.P. Davidson — Forward.
Lola Steill, McGill-Toolen — Center Back. The Yellow Jackets’ defender from one of Mobile’s most tradition-rich programs.
Sofia Maghupoy, St. Luke’s Episcopal — Midfielder/Forward.
Ashlyn Turner, St. Luke’s Episcopal — Goalkeeper. A third keeper from the coast, giving the South unusual depth at the position.
The concentration of selections from Mobile and Baldwin counties — spread across public schools in Mobile, Baldwin’s Eastern Shore programs and the Catholic and Christian school powers — underscores what local coaches have argued for years: that the Gulf Coast produces college-level talent at a rate its population alone would not predict, fed by year-round club soccer and a warm-weather training calendar.
The Alabama North-South Girls Soccer All-Star Game kicks off Wednesday at 5 p.m. in Montgomery, where the 14 South Alabama players will represent the Gulf Coast on one of the state’s biggest high school soccer stages. For Leathers, it is the next step in a soccer life that began at 7 years old — and, she hopes, one more line on the resume that carries her to the college game.
The midfielder’s craft is a fitting one for her outlook. Midfielders see the most of the field, link defense to attack, and do the running that rarely shows up in a highlight clip — which is roughly how Leathers describes her approach to the game itself: lots of touches, lots of miles, and the willingness to do the small things correctly until they compound into results. Her summer work on finishing was a deliberate choice for a player whose position creates chances as often as it finishes them.
Fairhope High’s soccer program has been one of the Eastern Shore’s most consistent in the AHSAA’s largest classification, and its players have grown accustomed to the winter season’s rhythm — matches through the cold months, playoffs in the spring, and a summer spent on club fields keeping sharp. The Pirates’ schedule annually includes some of the toughest opponents in the state, and Leathers’s all-star selection gives the program another line in its record of sending players to statewide showcases.
Union 10, the Daphne-based club where Leathers has spent her developmental years, has become one of the Gulf Coast’s recognizable youth brands, fielding teams across age groups and drawing players from Baldwin County and Mobile. Club soccer is where the multi-school relationships Leathers described are built: teammates in the spring who become opponents in the winter, and opponents in the winter who reappear on her side of the ball the moment an all-star roster is announced. That constant reshuffling of allegiances is one of the quirks of soccer along the coast, and it is why she predicted the all-star game’s unfamiliar teammates would feel familiar quickly.
The North-South format itself is a long-standing piece of the Alabama high school calendar. By splitting the state’s top rising seniors into two regional squads, the game gives players from smaller media markets a stage they might otherwise never play on, and it gives the AHSAA a summer showcase that fills the gap between the spring state finals and the fall sports season. College coaches use it as a concentrated look at the state’s next senior class, which is precisely the exposure Leathers said she was training for.
Her hope for a collegiate future is a realistic one for a player with her trajectory. Girls soccer rosters across the Southeast — from junior colleges to Division I programs in Alabama, South Alabama, Troy and UAB — regularly include Gulf Coast products, and the ID camps and showcase events Leathers has attended are the same circuit those college staffs mine for recruits. What remains for her, as she put it, is the process: relationships built one email and one camp at a time, and a final high school season to prove the summer’s work.