The Journey of Rediscovery

I’ll never forget the first time that I played against Ciera. We were ten and playing town travel soccer. Falmouth was playing Windham, who were renowned for being taller, faster, and way better at soccer than we were. I watched this girl with two different cleats smash a ball from half-field over the goal – I was equally terrified and impressed. A year later, we’d become teammates and friends when I joined Maine Coast United, my first premier soccer team. Twelve years later, we’re still friends but our soccer journeys looked a lot different. Today – in her own words – Ciera’s sharing the side of sports that a lot of high performing athletes run into at least once, but don’t like talking about.

At the age of 18, I had no idea who I was outside of soccer. In high school, weekends were designated to out-of-state trips for soccer tournaments and social hours only occurred with your teammates. When I say it was eat, sleep, soccer…I wish I was kidding. A typical day consisted of being at school by 7:25am, getting out at 1:56pm (weird time for school to end, I know), having one to two hours (if that) to get some homework done, driving roughly an hour and a half to practice, playing soccer, and turning around to go home. What was for dinner you ask? Anything you brought in your lunch box. I vividly remember getting home around 10:30pm and almost throwing temper tantrums because the door would be locked and I just wanted to go to bed. This was my typical routine three to four times a week. Don’t forget to add on basketball practice for the winter season.

By my senior year of high school, I was completely burnt out from nonstop soccer. I mean think about it, I had been playing premier soccer since I was in 4th grade – when they had asked me to play up an age group. I was roughly 9-10 years old when I started playing soccer almost year round. After playing Seacoast in New Hampshire my sophomore and junior year of high school, I decided to transfer back to the Maine Seacoast team hoping it would help with my search of more free time. It had significantly less travel time to practice and was less intense than Seacoast NH.

At the time, I was constantly tired and felt like playing soccer was more of a job. There was this ridiculous pressure to always perform at a high standard. I remember one practice where our coach wasn’t there so we had a fill in. He was running us through drills when he pulled me aside and said, “I get it now. I get why coaches speak so highly of you.” There were two things going through my mind at this point. 1.) What do the other coaches say? 2.) Now you really can’t fuck up.

Thoughts like these are the ones that slowly began consuming me. Thinking that I wasn’t allowed to make a mistake on the field because it would cost my team was a weight I had placed on myself. If we were 0-0 going into the second half, I would get multiple people telling me to hurry up and put one in the back of the net. I never said anything, but these kinds of statements sent my anxiety into overdrive because if I didn’t do my job, then why the hell was I on the field? I was at a point in my life where my worth was weighed in state championships and how many goals I could score in a game. If it didn’t score or even help with the assist? To call it a bad day would be an understatement.

I remember the first time I brought up not playing soccer in college. Mom looked at me like there was a stranger in her house. I think the hardest part for her was watching me quit something she knew I loved, but the thing is – I was sick. People tend to shy away discussing mental health issues because of the stigma that surrounds it. I was sick and that sickness was something you couldn’t physically see. My body gave me all of the signs but back then I didn’t know how to read them. I was tired all of the time, no matter how much I slept, my eyelids always felt too heavy. I could never focus on doing school work because I was constantly thinking about the other parts of my life that were slowly crumbling apart and I was trying so desperately to keep it all together. Here is the big one…I had grown to hate playing soccer. A sport I had once found so much happiness and freedom in had become iron shackles closed tightly around my ankles.

I was a senior in high school with no idea where I wanted to go or what I wanted to study. I had been so focused on the soccer aspect of college that it was like the whole school part had been forgotten (even though it’s the most important part). What the hell was I going to do for the rest of my life? Originally, I was supposed to go to the University of New England to play soccer and major in English. My step-grandfather on my dad’s side used to be an English professor there and since the coach was interested in me and the overnight had gone well, we figured it was a good fit. It wasn’t until I was at orientation that I realized this was not where I should be. My step-grandfather explained that the University was trying to build their English program and at first, that went right over my head. Orientation was when I found out that I was pretty much the only English major in the entire group. This was the first time I found myself unable to breathe. I had never been so happy to get off campus and I think a little part of me knew I wouldn’t be returning.

It was on the family camping trip in August when I fully realized I wouldn’t be playing soccer or attending UNE. It was one of those nights where I was too busy analyzing every single aspect of my life to go to sleep. I was staring at the cabin ceiling when I came to the conclusion that going to UNE just to play soccer was stupid. It was a waste of money on an English degree when they barely had a program. When we got home from camp, I talked to my cousins who raved about the University of Southern Maine. I opened up to them about everything that was going on and how it felt like I was falling apart from the inside out. Sitting on their counter, I sent an email to USM advising and two days before classes started, I officially enrolled at a school where the English program was worth it.

I attended USM for three full semesters before I emailed the head coach at the time looking to get back into the sport. In my three semesters, I had failed a class, dabbled in painting, read a lot of books, did normal people things like visit Boston for a long weekend (for fun – not soccer), found out who I was besides “that girl who is really good at soccer,” used exercise as medication, and just had fun. These semesters were dedicated to discovering myself and post-journey, I realized I had come full circle. I wanted to come out of retirement.

It’s funny actually – I remember having the old USM soccer coach for ODP (Olympic Development Program) when I played up an age group for the ’96 team, and I guess she remembered me too because when she found out I was attending USM, she emailed me about soccer. I swear to this day I didn’t receive an email, but I’m also kind of glad I didn’t see it.

I’m thankful for my time off from soccer. Two years allowed me to focus on things I typically didn’t have time for. I could actually focus on my love for writing and in the process, learned that writing is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to be an author, writing the kind of books that make you feel something. The kind of books that make your eyes tear up and your heart ache.

When I started playing soccer again, it was in the spring of my sophomore year at USM. I joined spring training and seemed to fit seamlessly. A lot of the girls asked me if I had transferred in, I simply responded, “no, I’ve always gone to USM.” They would raise their eyebrows at me in shock, wondering why I hadn’t played until now. I don’t think anyone’s ever pushed the topic and I was okay with that. In the fall, USM ended up getting a new coach, but it wasn’t that big of a deal since I was still pretty new. Sometimes the other girls would reminisce about the team and would forget that I had no idea what they were talking about, “I honestly forget that you haven’t been here that long,” they would say. I liked it that because it made me feel like I belonged there, they couldn’t remember me not being there.

My first season playing was record breaking for women’s soccer. We had the most wins in a season and to be honest, I wasn’t expecting it. I knew that the team wasn’t very good from looking at their record online. When I wanted to play again, I wasn’t really concerned with winning, I just wanted to kick a ball again. As we finished the season, I was just happy to be there. My main focus was being a part of the team, not scoring goals or winning games.

Going into my second season, I was nervous. I was scared because now there were expectations for me, again. I remember talking to coach in our one-on-one preseason evaluations. He talked to me about building on last year and my personal achievements. I told him I didn’t like focusing on the awards because I didn’t want to focus on myself, I wanted to focus on the team. If the team does well, we all do well. If the awards come, then they come. If they don’t, then they simply don’t.

There’s a running joke between my coaches and I that they aren’t allowed to compliment me, which is 100% correct. Compliments make my skin crawl because I don’t like when other people focus on me. Coach likes to do this thing where he introduces me to people as, “Cici, the lead goal scorer for the past two years,” and it never fails to make me tense. Recently, I have come to the conclusion that I don’t like it because it adds to the expectation. That with all of this emphasis put on me and the accolades, I have to be this “wow factor” soccer player and live up to the hype that hangs over my name. I’m still working on this compliment complex, so please bear with me – it’s a work in progress.

The only thing that matters to me these days is playing the game I grew up playing. The same game that I started playing as soon as I could walk. A game that my siblings and I played in the yard using Nana and Papa’s gates as a goal, making sure to use one fence as a barrier against Nana’s rose bushes, or else we were in big trouble.

Soccer is a part of me, but it’s not all of who I am.

Ciera currently plays soccer for the University of Southern Maine Huskies while majoring in English. She loves reading, writing, photography, and getting outside with her dogs.