When Cody is not competing for the Fury or for the United States Under 17 Youth National Team, the Bellerose resident stars for the Albertson Fury '89 in the Long Island Junior Soccer League.
Cody studies at Benjamin Cardozo High School in Queens where she is an honor roll student.
"Cody has tremendous ability on the ball. A fantastic engine with vision and top-class technique to go with it," commented Long Island Fury head coach Paul Riley. "Very good in one-on-one situations, she can play a multitude of positions and her recent verbal commitment to Duke for the fall of 2008 has given her more reason to continue her fantastic training."
While it’s been a natural progression up the soccer ladder, from club to state to regional team to national team, Cody was thrilled to be invited to her first national team camp. She remembers the phone call last December vividly.
“I saw the phone and it said ‘Home Depot,’ so I told my brother [Jesse] to answer the phone,” Cody said, thinking the caller ID indicated a sales call from the hardware superstore. “I hear him say ‘U.S. National Team? Hold on, I think she’s doing homework.’ I was like, ‘Are you kidding me!?' ”
As for her ability, there doesn’t appear to be a limit.
“Cody is not satisfied with mediocrity in anything,” said her mother Lisa Newman, a registered nurse out of New York Hospital in Queens. “She has high expectations of herself, no matter what the circumstance.”
That athletic drive, Lisa thinks, comes from her father, Steven, a baseball and softball player who she describes as “a great athlete, one of the best men around the bases you’ll ever meet.”
Newman not only meets each challenge head on, but she excels every time. After helping lead the Albertson Fury ‘89 to the State Cup title, competing in showcases and other tournaments, Newman played for the Long Island Fury, which won the WPSL national title in its first year in the league. She was playing against opponents much older than herself.
En route to winning the national championship, Cody was fouled by Chinese national team captain Ouying Zhang from WPSL side River Cities Futbol Club. The foul led to the only goal of the championship match, scored by Rebecca
Moros in the 88th minute, and is a foul Cody's mother loves to gloat about.
“She thought that was so cool,” Cody said as she laughed.