It's safe to say that Bison midfielder Gabrielle Clark has seen a fair amount of North America over the years.

Clark moved from her east coast hometown of Centreville, N.S. to Faribault, Minnesota in grade nine in order to hone her soccer skills in a larger market and ideally attain an NCAA scholarship. She noted that her four years playing with Minnesota's Shattuck-St. Mary's definitely helped her mature, especially not having her parents by her side.

"Shattuck really prepared me, because we played and practiced almost every day," Clark says.

"We had 50-plus games a year. It was really intense. I learned a lot of hard lessons, and especially being away from home, you don't have your mom or dad to lean on. But I wouldn't trade that experience at all, even though it was really difficult at times. It taught me a lot."

Clark's work on the pitch earned her a scholarship to play for Louisiana Tech University for the 2017 season. She made an immediate impact, playing in 21 of 22 matches while being named to the Conference USA All-Freshman team.

But despite her on-field success, Clark felt the need to make a change for the 2018 campaign due to a variety of reasons. One of the biggest factors was her schooling. She hopes to become a surgeon, and the University of Manitoba has a tremendous school of medicine. It doesn't hurt that both of her parents also attended the U of M, however Clark noted that that wasn't a major pull in her decision to commit to the Bisons.

"I knew in the back of my mind that I had a lot of family here and that my parents went here, but those factors I tried to separate when making a decision about going to a school," she says.

"Soccer isn't my first priority, school is. That's kind of where I want to move in my life now. I still work really hard on the field and I'm intense when I play, and I lift and do extra stuff, but my career and my classes are most important to me right now."

Interestingly, Clark already had a relationship with head coach Vanessa Martinez Lagunas, having met her last summer when tagging along to discuss her sister Emma.

"It was odd, because we were out for lunch and my sister wasn't there, because she was at the [Bisons] camp," she says. "I was about to go down and leave for pre-season in Louisiana and Vanessa was like 'if it ever doesn't work out, you can come here.' "In my mind, I was like I'll be fine, this won't be an option. But it turns out it was. It's crazy."

Clark has already made her presence felt on the pitch for Manitoba, as she's started in all all four of the Bisons' games this season and totaled three shots on goal. She's also formed a quick bond with her teammates.

"I'm friends with almost everybody on the team, whereas usually you'd just have your closed group and you know other people, but here I'm friends with everybody across the board, which is nice."

Want to see more from Gabrielle Clark? She was featured in last week's edition of Bisons TV — click the header image to watch the interview. Bison women's soccer are looking forward to another home weekend, as they play the Lethbridge Pronghorns at 2 PM on Saturday, September 22 and the Calgary Dinos at 2 PM on Sunday, September 23. Both games will be played at the West Turf Fields (U of M campus).