On April 15, 2022, the Publicity Department of Wuhan Municipal Party Committee unveiled the list of "Wuhan Role Models" for the first quarter of 2022, in which ten people (groups) made the list, and Wang Frost, a soccer player, became the only representative of the sports sector.
At the age of 12 to join the national youth team, 15 years old to promote the national youth team, 17 years old to become a member of the national team, 20 years old to fight in the World Cup, 23 years old to win the title of "Miss Asian Football"...... In the eyes of others, Wang Frost seems to be that In the eyes of others, Wang Frost seems to be the "other people's children", all the way to "jump" forward. However, in the hearts of fans, is she a natural soccer genius? Or is she the "savior" of Chinese women's soccer?
Behind the flash, applause and honor, Wang Frost is undoubtedly the "hero standing in the light", but in the eyes of her parents, teachers and reporters who have been following her growth for a long time, she is actually the same as every little girl, who will be afraid and cry in the face of difficulties, loneliness, aggression and frustration. Only, every time after being afraid and crying, Wang Frost always wipes away her tears, grits her teeth and rises to the challenge. She paid more sweat, suffered more, endured more loneliness and aggravation, just for that firm belief - I don't want to lose, I want to win!
Painful childhood, soccer is like a sudden colorful haze, illuminating the path of little Wang Frost running, helping her dispel the deepest darkness and fear in her heart.
For our first official interview with Wang Frost on July 2, 2013, we had an appointment at a Western-style restaurant in Wuhan Tiandi.In 2017, the restaurant chose tennis great Li Na as a partner, and when Wang Frost boarded a flight to Paris in the summer of 2018, she made a point of bringing a copy of Li Na's autobiography with her to read alone on her way up to the court, as she admired the big sister, also from Wuhan.
I've known the name "Wang Frost" for a long time, because her neighborhood, Hanyang Xidajie, hosts the annual "Wuhan Evening News Cup" soccer tournament for elementary and middle school students, and Wang Frost is a "star" in the tournament! "Wang Frost was only 18 years old in 2013, and her parents accompanied her for this interview, but a year earlier she had already joined the Chinese women's national soccer team and was about to travel to South Korea in a few days to join the TOTO soccer club in the Korean women's soccer league. She is the first female soccer player in Wuhan to play abroad at this age.
"My current strength? Well ...... it's still a bit of a struggle to play for the national team!" At that time, Wang Frost was like a little sister next door, not at all pretentious, lively, cheerful and confident. "However, one or two years later, I firmly believe that the main position of the national team to stand firm no problem at all!" She smiled and made a "victory" gesture to the reporter.
At the end of the interview, the reporter took a photo of our family of three, father Cao Yilin, mother Guo Fang and "good girl" Wang Frost - at that moment, being "arched" in the middle by her parents! Wang Frost was smiling brightly, but who knows what a painful childhood this 18-year-old girl had?
It wasn't until June 2019, ahead of the Women's World Cup in France, that Wang Frost spoke to the outside world for the first time about her childhood and her family.
"When I was 5 years old, my biological parents divorced. I actually knew from a young age that they weren't on good terms, but when my father sent me to my aunt and uncle's house so I could start living with them, I still had a hard time accepting that fact. I cried all night and that was the first time I felt truly helpless and vulnerable. What was even more unbearable was that my biological parents left Wuhan after the divorce and went to live in other cities, just like that, leaving me alone. Until now, I have not been in much contact with my biological parents, and we don't have much affection for each other. Whenever I think of parting with them like that, it still makes me very sad, and it's hard to express this feeling in words."
Wang Frost unabashedly spoke of her childhood pain in large paragraphs, and at that moment she faced her inner world without fear, because she had already won the battle with "herself".
This is a Wuhan "girl sae" in the face of pain, suffering, typical performance, there is no avoidance, no detour, only a head-on confrontation, and never admit defeat.
"My aunt and uncle have been my new parents, my real parents, ever since. Now when I refer to 'parents' I'm talking about them, they are the family I love. When I first moved into their house I did still feel very insecure so I used to just stay in my room and not come out, and that was also the period when I started playing soccer with my cousin who was like a real brother to me."
We should also mention the couple Cao Yilin and Guo Fang here. When we interviewed Wang Frost in 2013, Wang Frost had long since changed his name to call them dad and mom. But in fact, they are just the most ordinary working family in Wuhan, the sudden addition of a child to the family is a lot of pressure on the family, especially in the case of Wang Frost and his brother, Cao Guodong, are playing soccer, this "family of four" even held a formal family meeting.
Most of the couples in Wuhan are women as the "head of the family", so the final decision is made by the mother Guo Fang. "Now that you two are practicing soccer, we must be doing our best (to support), but if we as a family only have enough money to train one, then we also make it clear up front that it depends on which one of you is doing well (in soccer), then we will give the money to whoever we want to use it for. It must not be possible to say that because of which one we like better, or maybe patriarchy, we will give this money to the older brother."
Wang Frost was already 7 years old at that time, she expressed her wish very clearly, "I want to practice with my brother!" Looking at little Wang Frost's firm gaze, Guo Fang's heart of forced firmness immediately softened, "Okay, then we'll all practice together first, and in the future, whoever doesn't want to practice, or maybe can't stick to it, will tell us right away."
It is no exaggeration to say that it was soccer that pulled Wang Frost out of her childhood fears. For a young girl who tasted separation and betrayal too soon, chasing the ball at her feet was almost the only thing she could control and manipulate in her childhood. And soccer was a much simpler world than the one she was temporarily incapable of seeing - just make sure you don't lose the ball and kick it into the goal.
Fortunately, years later, both siblings became professional soccer players.2020 Wuhan epidemic prevention and control situation improved after the siblings Wang Frost siblings on the rooftop of their own home to turn the ball to each other to maintain the state of the video became an Internet hit.
At the end of 2020, first sister Wang Frost's team, Wuhan Chegu Jiangda Women's Football Team, reaped the first Women's Super League title in its history, and a month later, brother Cao's team, Wuhan Sanzhen, also managed to win the Central B League title, advancing to the Central League.
In the eyes of the two coaches of Wang Frost's teenage years, she has never been that out of nowhere "genius", "Wang Frost herself has a good physical quality, flexibility, speed, explosive force ...... and then she practiced more than the same team! The first thing you need to do is to get a good deal on your own.
"I still remember the first time I met Wang Frost very clearly." More than 20 years ago, Coach Xu Yilong was engaged in children's soccer training in Hanyang, and many parents in the neighborhood sent their children to practice, including Wang Frost's older brother, Cao Guodong. "At that time it was Wang Frost's mom and dad who came to pick up their son and brought Wang Frost along as well. I saw two small children chasing and playing on the field, and suddenly I realized that this little girl was very flexible and ran very fast, so I suggested that Wang Frost also come here to practice."
"Before Wang Frost came, my team was full of little boys, and when she came, she was the only little girl on the team." Xu Yilong said, "At the time of the initiation training, Wang Frost was the one who practiced the most seriously in the team. How can I put it? She has a toughness in her that she just wants to compete with those boys and surpass them."
Xu Yilong told reporters that he was actually introduced to soccer at the age of seven, which seemed slightly late at the time. "In order for Wang Frost to understand the nature of the ball, I told her to become best friends with the soccer ball, even if it's to sleep, you have to hold it." Xu Yilong smiled and told reporters that this was originally a half-true joke, in fact, he had said with many young players, but only Wang Frost really listened to it, "There was a period of time, she sleeps with the soccer ball by her side."
Conscientiousness, concentration, is Xu Yilong's deepest impression of Wang Frost. "At that time, I asked all the players to write a training diary, many boys are perfunctory, casually write a few words to cheat, but Wang Frost is particularly serious. What the coach said today, what she learned in training, which movements are more difficult to master, and so on, all written down, through the training diary you can feel, this little girl how devoted to soccer."
"Everything is afraid of the word 'serious'! Wang Frost herself has a good physical quality, flexibility, speed, explosive force ...... Then she practiced even harder and fiercer than the boys on the same team, so her progress was very fast. Probably by the third or fourth grade of elementary school, she is already the team's main force, and is the absolute main force." Xu Yilong said.
Because of her outstanding performance in the same age group, Wang Frost "jumped" into the national junior team at the age of 12, but also experienced a period of frustration that she does not want to look back on.
In the China Women's Football Team of Hope (National Junior Team), which is a cooperation between Beijing Three High School and CFA, Wang Frost, as the youngest child in the team, was not taken seriously by the coaches and hardly got a chance to play, plus the loneliness of living alone in a foreign place, she called home crying almost every day, so much so that even the team's life teacher felt that the child was having a pitiful time and advised the parents to simply bring the child back to Wuhan.
"Since I had taken Wang Frost in the municipal elite training camp, I was in favor of letting her come back after I learned about her situation in Beijing, and also talked to the life teacher of Team Hope, and we all agreed that this child might be mentally ruined if she stayed that long." Han Jian, Wang Frost's soccer coach during her middle school years, who had an important influence on Wang Frost's soccer life.
Han Jian recalled that Wang Frost appeared very depressed at the time when she had just returned from Beijing. "This child's confidence took a big hit, and for a long time she seemed at a loss for the soccer and the game she once loved. At that time, in the East West Lake women's soccer team I took, she could only play on the bench in her condition." Han said that in order to establish a new goal for Wang Frost, he told her to start as the game's main left-winger. "This goal has rekindled Wang Frost's fighting spirit, but also inspired her that unconquerable energy, once an elite player in Wuhan women's soccer, how can she still play in the middle school women's soccer can not play the main force?"
Since then, Wang Frost has been ruthless, not resting at noon and practicing extra at night. "I remember once in Nanning winter training, she every day after lunch to pester you, let you accompany her down to train. Wang Frost one, Lv Yueyun one, big noon, the stadium on the three of us, practicing passing, practicing shooting ...... at that time with the same training there Beijing team coach Liu Ying, Shanghai team coach Shui Qingxia are seen." Han Jian said, that training, Wang Frost's ball skills improved how much can not say, but he himself is born lean more than ten pounds.
Han took the Wujiashan High School girls' soccer team to represent Wuhan in the National Secondary School Games in 2009, and by then Wang Frost had become the team's starter. "In that tournament, Wang Frost conceded penalties one after another in two different games. When she came back, she found me and asked me to teach her to practice penalty kicks, and she asked for extra practice at the end of every training session. Since the technical movement of penalty kicks requires an accelerated leg swing, she couldn't practice more than one at a time at that age, so I gave her the rule of practicing a maximum of six in extra practice."
But once in the afternoon training, Han Jian due to something early to leave, back to the team when almost dark, but in the team did not see Wang Frost, asked other players are not clear, "I rushed to the stadium, when the sky is completely dark, dark I can not see people, then shouted her name, finally someone responded to me. I ran over and saw that Wang Frost was really practicing penalty kicks. I asked her, "Why are you practicing in the dark? Can you see the goal? She talked back and said, "I just need to see the ball!"
Now talking about this, Han Jian and angry and funny, but at the same time was also touched by the little Wang Frost that toughness, "and then asked her to know, the end of the practice we are gone, she was practicing alone there, said to practice a little bit of feeling, and then I said that the provisions of the rules to forget, said that before and after the kick more than 20 ... ...and then she strained her groin and took over a week off."
Han Jian said that it is because he has seen Wang Frost in her most frustrated and vulnerable posture that he knows this child is not some sudden or born-for-football genius or wizard. "Wang Frost does have the talent to play soccer, but it's her acquired efforts that are the main reason she's able to reach this height today. In the five or six years that I have taken Wang Frost, I can say with certainty that she has put in more effort than others, and even some of the men's soccer players who have trained with me, like Zhang Xizhe and Lei Tenglong, who we know, Wang Frost has trained with them, but in my opinion Wang Frost is still the hardest working one of them all."
Now Wang Frost has been the absolute mainstay of the Chinese women's soccer team, and Han Jian is still engaged in women's soccer youth training in East and West Lake District, but the two have always maintained close contact, whenever there is Wang Frost's appearance, whether it is the Women's Premier League, the Ligue 1 or the national team matches, Han Jian will be before and after the game and Wang Frost to exchange ideas. "Whether it is the previous year's Olympic
