Grace has Ayre of a player for England!
Starlet is part of national colleges’ squad
NEWCASTLE schoolgirl Grace Ayre has been chosen to represent the England Colleges’ under-18 side after makiing a meteoric rise through the footballing ranks.
Ayre started playing from a very early age and joined the football team at St John Vianney Primary School, where she was only one of two girls involved.
She did not join a club team until she went to Sacred Heart High School, when she joined Montagu and North Fenham Under-14 Girls.
During her time at Montagu Ayre was also chosen to play for Newcastle Schools’ FA, where she was made captain and led them to the league title in their very first season.
She played for Newcastle Schools for a further year before being selected for the Northumberland under-16 side.
Northumberland Schools’ coach Lee Coulter must have seen something special in Ayre as he asked her to join the Durham Regional Talent Centre.
She trained with Durham while still playing for Montagu and did so for almost a season.
At the end of the season she made the difficult decision to move full time to the centre.
Ayre enjoyed a successful first year at Durham as towards the end of the season she was also chosen to play for Durham’s development team with older girls.
At the trial process at the end of the season, Ayre was chosen to play for the development team - where she now plays her football.
After leaving school following her GCSE’s, Ayre made the move to Tyne Metropolitan College to study sports science as well as taking part in the college’s NESA football programme.
As part of the programme she was put forward for the north region England Colleges’ trials.
She was successful at these and went forward to the final stages of the trials in Sheffield.
Ayre was named in the final squad in late November as part of the England Colleges national women’s team.
She had her first match for them in December, which involved a twoday residential at St Georges Park.
England Colleges defeated the England Independent Schools squad 6-1 and Ayre was captain.
She is now hoping to be chosen for a reduced squad which will travel to Rome for warm-weather training and a tournament.