Soccer Is My Strength
By Sara Hathaway | IG: @sara_hathaway6 | TW: toxic relationship
Coming off one of my best seasons of my soccer career in my sophomore year of high school, I started associating with people I had not before. All of a sudden I was wrapped up in what the success of soccer brought me and thought I was in one of the highest points in my life. Coming into my junior year of high school, I was looking forward to the soccer season, but also for the new attention and happiness I had gotten from the relationship I had just begun. It felt great. At that time I thought my life couldn’t get any better. Little did I know how wrong these hopeful feelings were.
Fast forward a few months, I found myself in an emotionally abusive relationship. Not only was I being forced from playing soccer by my significant other, but I was also becoming separated from my family all because of this new relationship. At the time I thought I had owed him everything because of a mistake I had made. So I quit soccer. I quit club, I quit summer league, I quit high school, and I told all of the college coaches that I was in contact with that I did not want to play anymore. I thought this was the end of my career all because I was told I had to give it up for him.
The moment I told my high school coach I would not be playing my senior season, I regretted it. The next morning I asked to have a talk with her, but it turned into something more. As I went in for a talk with what I thought was my coach, was actually a talk with the AD. Little did I know he had been hearing some of things that were going on within my relationship at the time and they both decided that coming back to soccer was best as well as to pursue legal action against him.
From this conversation, I picked up with finishing my high school soccer career coming just short of my ultimate goal of scoring 100 goals, by only getting 98. From this disappointment, I decided very last minute that I wanted to play college soccer because my soccer career did not feel done yet. All during this, I had maintained my relationship in secret, which very few people knew about after all of the rumors got out about the emotional abuse, but I did not see a way out.
Entering college, I thought I was in another high in life. It was a fresh start for me moving out and being in control of my own life. I had salvaged the relationship with my parents and they could not be more happy to continue to support me in soccer.
With this new freedom, I all of a sudden had restrictions that weren’t there before. As I made more friends in college, my boyfriend didn’t approve, only this time the abuse had become physical. One particular moment that stood out to me was one night when I was taking a shower and all of a sudden he came storming in. He was upset that I was in a group chat with my roommates (who were girls) as well as other guys. Even though I had not texted in the group chat, he decided that wasn’t adequate enough and that even being in the group chat with other guys was enough to warrant punching me and throwing my phone at me in the shower. After laying in the shower crying for a while, I came out with a black eye which I told everyone I got from the soccer game we just played the day before.
After 4 years of enduring this abuse, I was saved. Even though it was a little over a year ago since I had gotten out, I still struggle with the mental aspects that came from it. However, throughout this whole situation, my relationship and love for soccer never changed. Soccer was the one thing I could count on during this. It allowed me to have an identity I was proud to have and gave me much needed time away from it all. I learned that soccer will always be my safe place even during the stressful games and tough losses that may occur. I realized that soccer was my strength when I didn’t know that I had one.
