The sounds emanated through the Northeast Fort Wayne, Indiana, neighborhood of Jeff and Lisa Killion almost every night from March to November.

Excited shouts of little girls, the thuds of feet striking a soccer ball with authority, more excited shouts, laughter, and the occasional intercession of a maternal or paternal voice to resolve a dispute, deliver a coaching tip or offer some compassion to someone with a bruised body part or ego.

This was the world of the Killions, and while the games are now mostly on some other, larger fields somewhere, it still is.

On those spring, summer and fall evenings, Megan, Gina and Sarah Killion would play 2v2 with neighborhood friend, classmate and current college prospect Eli Sommer. The games lasted long and they took place nearly every evening.

“Mom would watch and be there if someone would get too into it,” oldest daughter Megan Killion recalls. “Normally that was Sarah (the youngest). We would play until it got dark and then we’d put on the overhead lights and play in the dark. This is what we wanted to do, play soccer. If we weren’t in school my sisters and I would set up cones and set up a soccer workout during the day. Then we’d play more when mom and dad got home.”

If Lisa was the backyard mediator then Jeff was the referee and coach. Each of the Killion daughters, Megan, Gina and Sarah, talk about the way their father would work with them on skills in the family basement.

“My dad made me the player I am today,” said Gina, the middle daughter and a skilled defender who will be playing college soccer at Murray State next season. “I really enjoyed playing soccer but of course every girl wants to spend time with her dad, so that was important too.”

“We would go into the basement and set up cones and do ladders,” Megan, a college sophomore in Indianapolis who no longer plays competitively. “We would do pushups and situps every night. He didn’t make us, we wanted to do it.”

The girls played recreational ball for their father and then travel soccer, first at Citadel FC and then with current club Fort Wayne Fever. Megan and Gina played together and it was the youngest sister, Sarah, who would tag along.

“I would go to every practice and game of course I wanted to do everything they were doing,” Sarah said. “I was always juggling or working on some kind of skill and I guess it paid off.”

Paid off is an understatement in this case as Sarah, a high school sophomore, has already made a verbal commitment to UCLA as one of the top midfielders nationally in her graduating class. A recent set of matches on a full-length indoor field reminded why, as she dribbled and combined passes through two sets of defenders en route to 7 goals and 5 assists. Her technical base and vision, refined in all of those hours of impromptu training, is her greatest strength. She has generally played up one or two years on her club team and could be found at the local indoor facility nearly every night of the week, playing with some gender or age group. Now she even plays alongside a U13 Boys team against older boys from the same club, serving as an unofficial mentor and guardian, even during on-field disputes.

Sarah cited the warmer climate, the school and the chance to play for Jillian Ellis’ soccer program as the main factors in her choice. She has no attitude of having made it, however.

“We still do the same drills in the basement that we did when I was five,” Sarah said. “I’ve been down there twice this week even.”

Jeff Killion, who played college soccer at St. Francis College in Fort Wayne, said the basement workouts were in fact quite basic, and a product of his own soccer upbringing at the crosstown Fort Wayne Sport Club.

“I would just stand and throw them the ball and they would work on touches – the inside left, the inside right, the insteps, thighs, chest and head,” he said. “I wouldn’t move so they had to get it right to me. Then they would spend time hitting passes to themselves against the wall.”

It’s predictable that people not involved with soccer or some other sport would think so much organized activity is somehow a bad thing.

“It really brings us closer together,” Lisa Killion counters. “We’ve spent nearly every weekend together doing something since the girls were small. How many families can say that?”

Also predictable is the thought that the intensive training was somehow contrary to what the girls themselves would want. All three respond with a “not even close to being true.”

“We play because we love it,” was Sarah’s succinct reply. Another telltale item in this regard is that Megan, a two-time state championship winner at Bishop Dwenger High School, decided not to play in college despite being more than good enough.

“I felt like I might disappoint them but Gina and Sarah were always more into it,” Megan said. “With travel it got to where I would rather do school things. I kind of wish I’d played now but then I wouldn’t be able to study as well. When I watch my sisters or cousins play, I still love it and I think I should be playing. But they understood when I told them I didn’t want to play college.”

This year the two younger sisters, who hang out together a lot off the field, will play on separate club teams for the first time as Gina plays U18 and Sarah U17 to accommodate changing rosters and interests in the respective age groups. Some other talented players on their teams include Jordan Pawlik, Erin Beck, Paige Goeglein, Lisa Underwood, Abbey Paul and Megan Pedro.

Gina Killion adds that while Jeff was the talent developer, Lisa Killion is an unsung hero on the family soccer camp.

“She was always the one there to make sure you had something to drink and eat and she was there if you got hurt,” Gina said. “But she would also tell us to go practice our skills. She’s a pretty cool mom.”

Lisa harkens back to those spring, summer and fall nights in the backyard to sum it all up.

“My lasting memory is of these three girls and Eli, who is like a fourth daughter to us, getting together in the backyard every free moment from when the weather got nice enough until the winter and playing 2v2 in the backyard and just going all out,” she said. “The neighbors still talk about how much they all played soccer just about every evening if they weren’t playing a game somewhere else and there wasn’t snow on the ground. They just loved it. That is a good memory, but it goes by so quickly.”