‘I’m not afraid’. Why a Twin Cities teen leaves fear on the sideline when it’s time to play

South St. Paul senior Alida Ahern brings a certain mentality to playing two sports this fall.

Whether as a soccer goalie or a kicker for the Packers’ football team, Ahern, whose first name is pronounced “ah-LEE-dah,” leaves fear on the sideline when it’s time to play.

“I’m not afraid to take a chance at going for a ball,” she said of her goalkeeping style.

This season, Ahern booted her first successful field goal in a game, a 26-yard kick in a loss at St. Croix Lutheran. She added two more field goals against North St. Paul. As for joining the football team, Ahern said, “I just had to go in there with no fear.”

Fear, or dread, best described her father, Pat’s reaction, when receiving a phone call from a South St. Paul assistant principal. That’s because when you’re dealing with a child battling generalized anxiety, an innocuous phone call doesn’t exist.

“I would just wait for the phone call,” Pat Ahern said. “It would be, ‘This happened again today. What are we going to do about it?’”

What could Pat or his ex-wife Kim Baker do? Their daughter already transferred from Cretin-Derham Hall during her sophomore year. All they could do was try to support and encourage Alida through her journey out of the dark.

“She is never going to not defend herself,” Pat said. “She would get into verbal confrontations with other kids and with social media and using her phone 24/7, it just fueled her anxiety. She worked with counselors and learned to walk away, to be considerate of other kids. She wanted to graduate, and she didn’t want her sports taken from her.”