Why I stopped playing soccer

Quitting a sport you love is never an easy decision.

When you look at the finer details of why I don’t play soccer anymore, it’s becomes difficult.  I don’t really like to think about the truth of the matter:  I didn’t quit. My time as a player always had an expiration date.

My parents and I on my senior night

When I was in middle school, I had a coach who asked us on her first day if we wanted to play soccer after high school. We all sort of half halfheartedly said we were considering it, and after that every Monday practice was a “murder Monday.”

We would sprint until we couldn’t breathe or feel our legs. If we had to puke she would tell us that was a good thing and to go do it. I embraced that level of competition, and I became much better at soccer because of it. However, I wasn’t jumping up and down to make it a part of my permanent future.

Those who did go on to play in college worked incredibly hard for it. They were talented players that I was happy to play with and cheer on; they were players that I aspired to perform like, but not that I could truly compete with. One of the best players on my team was a sophomore when she verbally committed to play at the University of Virginia, and this is the typical age for serious D1 players.

What that means is that had I wished to pursue a sport in college, I would have had to decide years before I was even applying to schools. In a time when college athletics act as an enterprise for universities, playing a sport is an investment. I did not have time or money to invest in to the kind of club teams that colleges look at in in recruiting tournaments; teams that travel every weekend and practice an hour away from where I lived.

I loved soccer, and I never wanted to leave it, but I never pictured my college life with 5 am practices every morning. So I played on less competitive teams, where we were all hungover for our Saturday morning games and liked to gossip and stretch for as long as we could.

Soccer was fun, but it wasn’t always about the game for me.

My glory days playing wide midfielder for Colorado Ice (Ice Baby)

Even though there was no part of me that was ready to be done with soccer when I lost my final playoff game, I had known for a long time that I was never going to be a college athlete. And I was OK with that. Because when I came to college I brought with me my sense of competition, my love of exercise and getting outside, and my former identity as a soccer player. I was still the same person, I just had a lot less bruises and turf burns.

I can still be spotted fan-girling over Sydney Leroux (who is going to be the next biggest name in women’s soccer after she has the cutest baby of all time) and getting very excited any time I meet someone else who used to play my favorite sport.

It’s easy to look at the soccer players and envy them. It’s easy to look back at the best moments I had as a player and say, “maybe I could have done it.” But it is hard to maintain every aspect of the people we used to be. I chose to pursue my love of writing. I chose to pursue new relationships outside of a team. I chose to pursue the sleep I would be loosing if I were practicing.

I chose a lot of things over soccer, and I don’t regret any of it.

My sorority’s championship performances this weekend in a Sig Pi flag football tournament renewed my sense of competition