Karina Camacho loved playing soccer and growing up in Tucson. The 29-year-old was also raised in a military family and always knew she wanted to be part of it.
Now, Camacho is still finding ways to incorporate all of the loves in her life.
Captain Camacho was in the 60th Surgical Operations Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, California, but is currently transitioning from active duty to the reserves and will move back to Tucson next month.
In October, Camacho will compete in the Military World Games in China, a multisport event similar to the Olympics for military sportspeople organized by the International Military Sports Council (CISM).
“Naturally, I’ve always been involved with soccer to some capacity, so of course I researched opportunities in the military with soccer and I kind of knew about armed forces sports, but not in much detail,” Camacho said.
“It wasn’t until a friend of mine — that I played on my base soccer team with — she had participated on this team years ago and she kind of gave me information on how to go about it.”
Throughout her career in the Air Force, while in Scottsdale for training and the last three years in California – with the exception of a deployment to Afghanistan last year, Camacho would drive down to Tucson or Southern California to meet up with the FC Tucson Women’s team.
The Cienega High School grad, who went on to play for the University of Arizona and Long Beach State, has been part of the local soccer team at some capacity since its inception.
“At the time, it was never really in the cards for me to go professional,” Camacho said. “It just wasn’t the right timing, I suppose, and I always wanted to pursue a career in nursing. So, I started doing that and I participated in FC Tucson when it began and before that it was TSA FC and before that it was Rush.”
Overall, Camacho has been playing in the WPSL for 10 years. Yet, she never could have imagined it would have led her to play on her base team and represent the U.S. in the Military World Games.
“I’ve been around soccer a lot and I never really thought that it would keep me here,” Camacho said. “I never anticipated such a wonderful opportunity like this to come up. It’s going to be a really neat way to, not just represent your country, but also represent the men and women who are out there fighting for our freedom who are committed to serving. To represent them is something extra special. I’m really excited.”
At 29, Camacho considers herself a grandma on the pitch, especially because she doesn’t play all the time. The mission comes first, she said.
Even then, she hopes to be able to squeeze out a few more years of competitive tournaments before retiring as a player. Once her playing days come to an end, Camacho said she might look into coaching.
Aside from deployment, Camacho thinks her camp tryout was a beneficial and insightful experience.
There were 40 women at tryouts and they were all united, not just by their love of soccer, but also for their passion to serve.
Camacho had never felt so much girl power in one place at one time.
“All of these women do amazing jobs and a lot of them are just around men a lot of the time,” Camacho said. “A lot of the difficulties of being the only female in their flight or their units or at their training and overcoming adversity. It was neat being able to share stories with each other, talk about our jobs and see what a lot of people have overcome.
“It was inspiring to be around these people.”
