Above, Fort Lowell Soccer Club 04 Arsenal midfielder Belana Horsinka controls the ball as she competes during pool play at Saturday’s Tucson Association of Realtors Shootout at Townsend Middle School. Below, Horsinka, 11, gets a friendly smothering from teammate Catherine “Cat” Bennett after their game.
Mike Horsinka found his daughter’s name in space, the final frontier.
And Belana Horsinka has star power — even if she’s just 11.
The Fort Lowell Soccer Club 04 Arsenal standout opened play at the Tucson Association of Realtors Shootout on Saturday. And while her team lost 3-1 to the El Paso-based SouthWest Rush Gunners 04 and 1-0 to TSA 04 Blue Arviso, the midfielder says she likes how the tournament has gone.
“We lost both of our games, but I think we did really well working as a team together,” Horsinka said.
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Horsinka attends BASIS, one of Tucson’s most prestigious schools. She started there the same year she moved from AYSO to club soccer, presumably to improve her promising game. She’s an achiever in both areas: Horsinka is running for president of the National Honor Society at BASIS, and is juggling a busy training and playing schedule.
Her coach, Mack Romero, says Horsinka will sometimes come to practice even after it’s been canceled.
She hates to miss training.
“A lot of times, we’ll have four games in a tournament, and I’ll give Monday off to the kids and she gets upset,” Romero said. “It rains and I’ll send out an email, and she’ll send me an email back: ‘Coach — but Coach, come on.’”
As a result, Horsinka is “growing by leaps and bounds every season,” Romero said.
“I’ve had her for two years now, and there’s just been tremendous growth in her tactics and her technical (game).”
Not only does she have the game, but she also has the name. Mike Horsinka named Belana after “Star Trek: Voyager” character B’Elanna Torres.
While it may not be as inspired as Lanesra, an Australian girl named after her father’s favorite soccer team, Arsenal — spell it backwards — it still comes with a story.
“When I was pregnant, I had a boys name right away, so I told my husband he could choose a girls name and we wouldn’t argue over it,” said Maya Hendrickson, Belana’s mother. “So he was watching TV one day and he came in, and he’s like, ‘Oh, I got a name,’ and I’m like, ‘All right … what were you watching?’”
Belana fit perfectly, Mike explained to his wife. The “Voyager” character is the ship’s chief engineer, a half-alien/half-human who is very smart.
“The alien part is that she’s German and American, so that’s where it came from,” Hendrickson said with a laugh. “I loved it right away.”
