Halifax soccer player heading to Special Olympics World Games in Berlin

Halifax athlete Ashley Thomas is heading to Berlin later this month as part of Canada's first Special Olympics all-women's soccer team.

The midfielder is one of 89 Team Canada athletes gathering in Toronto this weekend before going to Germany.

She spoke to CBC Radio's Information Morning Nova Scotia about her love of soccer and how she is preparing for the event.

The Special Olympics World Games take place from June 17-25.

This is a pretty big deal. How excited are you?

I'm really excited, especially after I got my haircut. Now I'm really excited because now I'm ready completely.

How much training and hard work have you been doing leading up to this?

A lot of training. I train every day I can. Whether it's on the field or off the field, like practising breathing to help me mentally if I get too anxious to calm me down a little bit.

Since you're in Nova Scotia and your other teammates are elsewhere, how do you train with them?

Every first and third Tuesday of every month we were on Zoom doing a workout.

For me it was at 9 p.m., so I had to make it work.

What do you do?

We just do a little workout, one of the coaches has something planned.

Sometimes it's doing stuff with the ball, sometimes it's just doing squats, push-ups, sit-ups, whatever that coach had planned.

Is this going to be the first time you're meeting up with some of your teammates in person?

We had the training camp in Toronto in November and then one in April that was in B.C., so we met up two different times.

I have my local team here because I play for the Sackville Bedford Bravehearts.

How long have you been playing soccer?

I joined Special Olympics in 2012 but I've been playing ever since I could remember.

Even when I was a kid in the