Sydney's Story, Spring 2024

As a kid, I would always wanna play outside. I was not really an indoors kid. I played recreational, like, travel sports for a long time up until like sixth grade. There kind of came that switch where I started getting quite serious about soccer. My family, friends and my father were like, oh, we should try trying out for District Select Program, which in short is DSP, basically a regional program where you try out for it and it takes the best players of each region.

I tried out for it with my friend and we both made the team, that introduced me to one of my favorite coaches ever, Mark Tanner. And he asked me to play for the Northampton PBJSL team. Me being from Eastampton, like, that was a weird request, but I ended up falling through with it because the Northampton soccer team was a lot better. Mark Tanner also asked me to play for his Euro United team, which is a travel soccer team.

From the years of sixth grade to eighth grade, I played for Euro in Northampton PBJSL. In eighth grade, going into my freshman year of high school, I really trusted Mark Tanner and he was like, oh, my daughter Caroline is going to go try out for FC Stars, which is an even better program than Euro United. And he was like, I think you should do it as well, you'll absolutely make the team. And at this point, like I was in love with soccer, it was everything I did. So I tried out for FC Stars and I end up making the team. However, unlike any other of the soccer teams before, I was sharing the keeper role with another girl.

As I played for FC Stars and I played for Northampton High School, I was feeling really alone. And I began realizing that the FC Stars girls, besides my group of girls from Euro, didn't really like me. As I transferred to a new school and felt lonely and also transferred for a new team, like I just felt my confidence diminishing. And there was this very prominent time where I realized my place on the team was when we were at a tournament, they made a group chat to talk to each other. Every one of my teammates was in this group chat and I wasn't. And I had no idea that I wasn't in there until I looked over to one of my friends' phones and saw that there was a group chat. These five girls that I'm really close with that I came from Europe United didn't even add me to the group chat. So I was like, okay, so everyone just hates me, even my own friends.

As the year went on and the spring came, we had a game. I wasn't performing well and then my coach told me he was demoting me. I was like, okay, now it's actually coming to fruition. Like you actually don't want me. And I walked over to my dad and I told my dad and then my dad was like, okay, well we're done.

Over the next three years, even though I still played it, and I moved back to the Euro United team, I was just not enjoying it. This whole idea of me transferring, whether it was from team or from school, it had tremendous impacts on my confidence, and honestly has made me an incredibly insecure individual. My whole identity up until I graduated high school was sports.

Even though I fell out of love with soccer, I had a very successful basketball career in high school. I loved my coach, he really enjoyed me, and he really helped build my confidence in myself when it came to basketball. Unfortunately, when I was in my senior year of high school, I tore my ACL. That completely was the end of my sports career.

As I've become an adult, and I'm graduating from college in two weeks, I realized how much I miss playing sports. My friend asked me to be a part of his soccer team just for fun for UMass. I had to tell him no, cause I can't handle being bad, cause I think everyone's gonna talk about me.

There was one girl at my FC Stars team who I kind of make the scapegoat for all my issues. There are times where I'm like, oh, I'm so over it, but I'll see her on campus and it's as if I'm 14 years old playing soccer and her laughing at me. My anxiety tells me that everyone hates me.

So, like, I just make sure I surround myself with people that I really care about. Right now, my healing journey is basically just reminding myself that there are good parts of me and there are bad parts of me. It's okay that people don't like you because you don't like everyone. I'm trying to make a goal for the end of the year where I'll just try a new sport, because I'm going to be bad at it, because I'm brand new to it. But, yeah, that's my story.