Shilling is getting a soccer tutorial from the midfielder, who is part of LAFC’s affiliate team in the MLS Next Pro league, LAFC2. “Like this?” Shilling asks, gingerly tapping the ball while swaying her arms left, then right.

across from the LAFC Performance Center, is a vast expanse of emerald green but the two stick close, passing the ball between them. On a brisk recent afternoon Shilling found herself kicking around a soccer ball with Los Angeles Football Club player Christopher Jaime, who’s giving her tips on how to kick and pass.

These days, the artist is changing her opinion of sports. “I still think about, to this day, how hard it was to run the mile,” she says, laughing. She immersed herself for hours, drawing comics or making dioramas from discarded 7-Eleven Slurpee cups, filled with fake bugs or aliens. She doodled on whatever surface she could find - in notebooks, sketchbooks, on her desk. Growing up in L.A., Alake Shilling was a quiet and shy kid obsessed with drawing.

Soccer Story instal the new