Boys will be boys - and as it turns out - even when playing against girls.

Ashley Meier discovered as much a couple years back while playing on one of the Cleveland Whitecaps boys' teams.

Maybe they were testing her; gauging her toughness. Or maybe they were simply competing against her with the respect that she’d well earned.

At any rate, during one match in particular, Meier was being frequently knocked around by a certain defender.

Her coach, Tolga Yanmaz, remembers it well.

“They were showing her no mercy,” Yanmaz said. “She was starting to get emotional, so I brought her to the sideline and asked if she wanted to come out … she didn’t respond.”

Not with words, anyway.

On the next play she leveled her antagonist, sending him to the pitch with a message that spoke loud and clear.  

“After that she came back to the sideline and said, ‘don’t take me out,’ ” Yanmaz recalls. “That’s how competitive she is and the kind of will she has to win.”

Said Meier: “I didn’t want to come out of the game. I wanted to prove myself and go back at it.”

Meier, a 15-year-old forward, has been going at it in one way or another for her entire life. If not with the boys – who she trained with for three years – then with her current Whitecaps U18 team girls team, or the US national teams she’s been a part of.

And long before any of that, back when boys were more likely to push or hit in lunch lines than on soccer fields, Meier battled with her sister Alyssa.

Two years older, and an accomplished soccer defender, Alyssa challenged Ashley early on. While the two have always been close, they enjoyed 1v1 not-always-so-friendlies in the yard.

“She’s always been a role model for me,” Ashley said. “There was a lot to learn from her, she used her body well as a defender. She taught me when you get pushed around to push back.”

While playing in the US U17 Women’s National Team camp last week in Carson, Calif., Meier did a lot of pushing back. During a scrimmage against the U14 boys Irvine Strikers she couldn’t have looked more at home.

Meier has the kind of athletic ability that can fit well amongst any competition. At 5-foot-8, she’s physically gifted with speed and strength, but also relies on her soccer brain to set her apart.

“Sometimes you have players who are gifted but they don’t learn very fast,” Yanmaz said. “She’s the kind of player who always listens and is willing to learn and accept criticism because she knows there’s room to improve.”

Meier said what she enjoys most about her US National Team tours, which included the U14 team, is the tactical testing. She praised the drills that U17 coach Kaz Tambi put her through because it gave her a clear view of what she wanted to work on.

This is the same reason she relishes the opportunity to compete against older and more physically developed competition.

“It’s really great to play against the guys because everything is a little faster,” she said. “You have to be a little ahead in everything you do. They are bigger and stronger and you have to learn to use your arms and get big when you’re holding the ball. It also forces you to be strong with the ball so that you can move it around as you hold them off.”

During the high school season, Meier plays for Strongsville, one of the top programs in the state of Ohio. As a freshman, she helped lead the team to the state final played in the Columbus Crew Stadium.

Meier is hoping that her sophomore year includes a state championship, and she’s looking to respond to the finals loss the same way she did getting knocked down on the soccer field   

“I always want to come back stronger and better than I did the last time,” she said.