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Skyridge junior Kalena Bellini (22) poses for a photo with other members of the Brazilian U17 women's national team after they won the South American Championship in Paraguay in March.

Courtesy Confederação Brasileira de Futebol

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Skyridge junior Kalena Bellini kicks the ball as a member of the Brazilian U17 women's national team during the South American Championship in Paraguay in March.

Courtesy Confederação Brasileira de Futebol

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Skyridge junior Kalena Bellini (22) poses for a photo with other members of the Brazilian U17 women's national team after they won the South American Championship in Paraguay in March.

Courtesy Confederação Brasileira de Futebol

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Skyridge junior Kalena Bellini kicks the ball as a member of the Brazilian U17 women's national team during the South American Championship in Paraguay in March.

Courtesy Confederação Brasileira de Futebol

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“Is this real?”

It’s hard to blame Skyridge junior Kalena Bellini for feeling that way back in late February.

Only days earlier, the Falcon star had been going to classes and getting ready for the 2024 outdoor track season. Suddenly she was virtually on her own in Brazil, playing soccer for the Brazilian U17 women’s national team.

What happened?

Bellini had the skill, having excelled on the soccer field both at the high school level (17 career goals) and with her club, Wasatch SC, which won two national championships in their age division.

She also had the international connection since both of her parents, Marisa and Buck Bellini, were born in Brazil and she has dual citizenship.

But before February, there was no connection between Kalena Bellini and the Brazilian national team.

Sometimes it pays to just take a chance.

“My mom contacted the Brazilian coach through Instagram,” Kalena Bellini said earlier in April. “This is someone who played for the national team and is really big time, so you never know if they are going to respond. But one day she responded and said she would look at me. My mom sent her some highlights and the coach said, ‘yeah, I like her. Can we get her to come for training?'”

Kalena Bellini had other things going on but changed her plans quickly to take advantage of the opportunity.

“I had like zero preparation for any of it,” the Skyridge star said. “I even asked my mom, ‘is this even real?’ It still to this day doesn’t feel like it was for real. I’ll go through the pictures and see myself in the jersey, and it feels fake to me. But it was amazing.”

Kalena Bellini had the advantage of speaking Portuguese, although she admitted she wasn’t perfect at it.

“It was actually more the Portuguese side that I was scared of, not the soccer side,” she said. “I didn’t know if the girls would make fun of me for how I spoke, but they didn’t. They were super nice about it. A lot of them were learning English, so they helped me with my Portuguese and I helped them with their English.”

But she did have to get familiar with the soccer terminology in a different language — and she had to do it basically alone.

“I had zero friends, so the first two weeks were really tough,” Kalena Bellini said. “I could only say hi to my mom through a gate during training. My parents couldn’t go out and talk for me. Going 42 days without family was hard. It meant I had to do everything myself. It was super tough mentally.”

But as she got acclimated to the expectations and her team, she started to settle in and enjoy the soccer.

“They’re very technical,” Kalena Bellini said. “They know exactly where they’re going to play before the ball even gets to them and they’re very fast. They know their shots are accurate. Everything that they do is just perfection. If you get something wrong, you’re going to get yelled at but they will perfect it.”

After three weeks, the Brazilian team finally got ready to compete in the South American Championship in Paraguay in March — but that added new levels of stress for Kalena Bellini.

“That’s where the fun part started but then the nerves started coming out,” she said. “The first game was tough for everybody but especially for me. I was the only new girl there. All the other girls had been there a few times, so their nerves were already out. It was just that was a tough game for me. LI started, but I didn’t play the best that I could. As soon as it was over, I was like, I don’t even know what just happened.”

But as the team progressed through the tournament and kept winning, the Skyridge junior got more and more comfortable.

In the championship, she got on the board with her first competition goal as a Brazilian player.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to just to score a goal,” Kalena Bellini said. “It wasn’t even the best goal, but a goal is a goal. I scored a goal and I made an impact there. I could say I have a little footprint on the team, that I helped the team a little bit. It was just amazing.”

Brazil ended up winning the tournament and Kalena Bellini said it was thrilling to be able to celebrate with all of those players who had started as strangers but ended up as friends.

“Everybody’s so close with each other,” she said. “You’re partying in the locker room. In our final game, after every single one of our goals, everybody would cheer for us. All the subs would come and jump on us. The coaches would jump on us. It was never different from the first goal to the fifth goal. Everybody’s just there for you. They’re with you. They’re cheering for you. It was just a whole team, which was something that like I really loved.”

Kalena Bellini ended up starting six of the seven games, which means she likely has a good chance to come back for more opportunities with the team. She said she is trying to maintain some relationships with her teammates from Utah so she doesn’t have to start over if she gets to go back.

“I want to be close with all the girls as much as I can,” she said. “A lot of the girls will also text on the group chat that we had there, just pictures or saying they miss each other. I definitely still have my personal connections with the girls, which is so nice.”

The Skyridge junior also got a lot of congratulations from her friends and teammates at home, as well as great attention from colleges because of making it on such a high profile team.

She is currently running track for the Falcons but said she plans to graduate a year early and get set for the next chapter of her life.

One of the most powerful messages that Marisa Bellini sees in her daughter’s success is the value of determination. Kalena Bellini tore her ACL and broke her collarbone, yet never gave up and made one of the best youth women’s soccer teams in the world.

For her part, Kalena Bellini said she learned to value every opportunity.

“You have to appreciate what you have, especially in the moment,” she said. “I don’t think I appreciated what I had until the very last moment. There are so many little things to be grateful for.”

Looking back at the last couple of months, Kalena Bellini said her advice to herself in February (or anyone with a similar opportunity) is to be yourself.

“Nobody wants somebody trying to be someone they aren’t,” she said. “Anybody who is just trying to get to this point, just do the best you can because that’s what the coaches are looking for. Be open to anything that comes to you. Doing things that you’re not comfortable with is definitely something that I had to learn, but that’s something that has helped me not only there in Brazil, but also outside of Brazil, even right now. You have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone.”

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