A second Loudon County athlete may have a chance at the Olympics in the near future.
Mariah Plieseis, a 12-year-old Fort Loudoun Middle School student, has made the Tennessee Olympic Development Soccer team (ODP) and will compete in San Antonio, Texas on Feb. 20-21.

The ODP is a program started in 1977 that "was introduced to identify a pool of players, from which a National Team would be selected.  This would begin at the state level, advancing regionally, and finally to the national level," according to the Tennessee state soccer Web site.
There will be two teams heading to Texas this year with a total of roughly 30 players taking part.  Nearly 75 total players originally tried out for the team.

She just missed making the team last year when close to 90 players tried out.
Plieseis, whose sister Chelsea is a soccer player at Loudon High School, has played soccer since her early American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) days.  She played that for roughly five years and has since played four years for the FC Alliance U-13 Black team in Knoxville.

She is now the captain of the team that has won back-to-back state championships.
She also plays for the FLMS team and is a captain on that team.

Competitive soccer is a time-consuming activity, as Plieseis' mother, Andi, said the family makes trips nearly every other week when they can out to stats such as Ohio, Alabama and North Carolina.
Pleiseis will have a chance to move through the ranks of the ODP as she gets older, as 14 and 15 year olds can qualify for the regional Olympic team and 16-17 year olds can qualify for the national Olympic team.

And one day, she may just find herself on the the U.S. Olympic soccer team.