On Soccer & Survival

Musings from a queer, disabled ex-soccer star

The 2023 Women’s World Cup - which I will be referring to simply as the World Cup¹ - runs for a month, beginning today. So much of my childhood was measured in seasons and tournaments, scheduled around playing and watching soccer, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the most influential moments of my life thus far can be told in the minutes between the whistles of referees. 

I grew up playing soccer year-round. It was my small hometown’s chosen sport, and what started as playing on the summer rec team turned into playing in the spring, fall, and winter. I joined the competitive team and took extra lessons (they should have, perhaps, put a height limit on the goalkeeper training.) In the years before I was diagnosed with a chronic illness, I still sometimes struggled to find joy in the activity. Too slow, too small, too weak. Not aggressive enough for defense, not fast enough for offense, too short to stop balls from bouncing over my head in goal. Surrounded by girls I thought were so much better than me, I sunk into the insecurity that came naturally and worked myself to the bone mentally and physically trying to keep up. When I speak about it as an adult, though, the first thing out of my mouth is often how much I adored it. Soccer was my first lesson in being “just okay” and “infrequently great” at something. It’s a lesson I could stand to remember a decade after hanging up my cleats. 

When I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, my first worry was the needles and my second was soccer. Despite being far from a star athlete, over the years I had found my stride. The sport was my avenue into friendships and social standing, and I worried that this new diagnosis would amplify how I felt off the field - weird, nerdy, uncool. The handful of seasons after my diagnosis were my first experience with what I can now identify as internalized ableism. I bypassed my body’s limits, ignored my newly ill status, and forced myself to fit into the same healthy, non-disabled box I had fit in previously. Without the accommodations my body needed, I started falling behind. Our two hour practices weren’t sustainable. I started having low blood sugars, running off the field mid-scrimmage to prick my finger and guzzle an apple juice. I did my best to make it work. I carried bottles of juice and protein bars everywhere. I brought a lunch box filled with ice packs to keep my insulin cool during long, sunny tournament days. Petrified of passing out on the field in front of a crowd, I started purposefully spiking my blood sugars before games, only to have the adrenaline of the match shoot them even higher. If managing my disability was a game, I was losing - badly - and my survival strategies were only making me sicker and more unhappy. Quitting soccer mid-season was the first time I quit something due to disability, but it wouldn’t be the last. 

The 2011 World Cup was Megan Rapinoe’s debut Cup appearance, and I was instantly infatuated. I was twelve, still a devoted fan and player, and all I knew about her was that she had cool hair, was so damn fast, and played the same position I did at the time. I watched the tournament with my dad, who had followed my lead and become a late in life soccer fan. We listened to the final match of the Cup on the radio in the car, driving home from my grandparent’s house. I was crushed to be missing it. After screaming Rapinoe’s name and watching her platinum hair streak across my TV screen, just listening to this historic moment felt like a bad omen. Still, I leaned in, straining against my seatbelt in the front seat, and screamed alongside my dad as they tied, then lost to Japan in a shootout. It was the first time I cried over a game I hadn’t been playing in, and it was also the first time my dad asked me about my queerness, undoubtedly seeing the glimmer in my eyes while I watched her play. It wouldn’t be the last time he gave me space to come out, nor would it be the last time I sobbed over a loss that wasn’t my own. 

I loved soccer, because I loved being a part of a team, a community. I loved the adrenaline and the feeling of scoring a goal (which I did minimally) or making a great pass. I loved the complete, gleeful lightness that came with each arms flung in the air, face to the sky, giant smile win. The thing I loved most, though, was feeling completely comfortable in my skin. The years I played soccer coincided with my years in Catholic school. I attended church weekly, studied the Bible in religion class daily, and regularly attended confessionals. Though I evaded catholicism without the intense trauma that many face, I still think back to the shame I felt, sitting with the priest, only a thin wall separating us. In those moments, my innermost desires and wants felt like they were on display for God to see, and I did my best to lock them away, hidden deep in the crevices of my mind.

On the field, a ball between my feet, my coach yelling from the sidelines, I was just a body - sweaty, dirty, sunburnt - with an objective: score a goal, don’t let the other team. Soccer made my existence a simple one, before disability complicated it. 

If soccer was my introduction to the limitations of my disabled body, my burgeoning queerness, and my reliance on accommodations, collegiate football was my introduction to devastation. Before college, I was a casual football viewer but never a fan. At the University of Arizona, I experienced the heady feeling of a student section full of wasted barely adult college kids. Tailgating was a ritual of slipping mouths easily onto bags of alcohol passed person to person, tipping back bottles of cheap vodka, sliding sticky fingers around the rims of jello shots. I was a seventeen year old who had never been a partier, but in those moments, shoulder to shoulder, body to body, with unnamed frat boys and equally hazy friends, screaming and singing and painting our school’s logo onto our faces, I was fun. It was during one of those tailgates that I had my first kiss with a boy whose name I never knew. I danced and drank before stumbling into a stadium and cheering with my whole heart. Though moments like those - drunk and curious and carefree - quickly soured for me, my love for the ritual of college football remained steadfast. It only grew when, as a transfer student at the University of Michigan, I got to be a Wolverine, cheering in the Big House. 

After so many years of loving sports and the uniting feeling of fandom, it’s easy to understand why the Wolverines’ wins steadily became my own. The most memorable game from my time as a Wolverine wasn’t one I attended in person, standing with friends in the biggest college football stadium in the country and trading insults with the other team. It was a Thanksgiving rivalry match against OSU, I was home for the long weekend, and I had just dropped out. My family didn’t know yet, and I hadn’t accepted it myself. Deep in denial, my delusional heart told me that if Michigan just won that game, somehow everything would be okay. The moment comes to me in flashes, now. My family’s concerned looks when I started crying, knowing their loss was inevitable. Finally telling them that I was done, that I had also lost. Only, it wasn’t a season record slipping through my fingers but a future. Crumpling, my knees hitting the floor. My dad holding me. My mom retreating to her room and closing the door. It was one of the worst days of my life, and ESPN played in the background, crowds on camera a sea of maize and blue. 

Looking back, I wonder how many of these losses could have been prevented with accommodations. The answer, of course, is all of them. As a kid, I didn’t need to quit soccer; I needed to find a way to listen to my body while playing. If I had stopped pushing myself past my limits, playing year-round and trying to keep up with my non-disabled teammates, maybe I could have found joy in the simple movement of it, the strategy, the shared wins and losses. As an adult, if I hadn’t faced ableist professors alone and had received institutional support, I wouldn’t have had to leave the university empty handed, heartbroken, and lost. In so many points of my life, I needed a timeout but was forced into a forfeit. Now, I’m doing my best to take control, changing the rules to give myself the time, space, and freedom to find joy. I never needed to change the player, just the game. 

As I watch this World Cup, the last that Megan Rapinoe will play in, I’m proudly queer and disabled. I’m in physical therapy, and doing the exercises religiously has made me physically stronger than I thought possible. Though my chronic pain and fatigue are still present and worsening, I’ve started running, slowly, and a part of me has started reconnecting to the freedom I felt on the field. I’m healing my relationship with academia and college as a whole, and I may even go to a football game this fall. As I watch this tournament, I know I’ll be emotionally invested. I’ll be screaming at the TV and likely shedding a few tears. But, I’ll be doing it as someone infinitely more comfortable in their body and personhood than I was the first time I cheered on the U.S. Women’s National Team. I’ll be doing it as someone who’s survived long enough to watch the debut and finale of their favorite player’s World Cup career. That’s a hell of a win. 

1. How outrageous is it that the Men’s World Cup is referred to only as the World Cup when you couldn’t pay me in cold hard cash to give two flying flips about the U.S. Men’s National Team? There are two versions of the World Cup and they NEVER OCCUR AT THE SAME TIME. Is the use of the gender binary really necessary? Plus, there are several openly non-binary players in the tournament, so it’s not only absurd but also inaccurate. This is the hill I will die on. Thank you for your time. Commence.

Image Description: Autumn, a white twenty something with auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, holds Megan Rapinoe’s memoir and grins, squinty eyed, while sitting on a deck. They’re wearing denim shorts and a blue Chicago Red Stars baseball cap.