Four years ago, I moved to Poland. That’s four years of playing professionally, four years of memories, four years of lessons learned, and four years of surprises. It was also four years of trials, four years of doubts, and four years of loss. There’s a duality to playing professionally that I don’t think I necessarily understood when I signed up. I expected the great moments, and to a certain extent, I even expected the lows. What surprised me was just how vast the difference was between the two. To be fair, the only thing I knew four years ago was how to play soccer (debatable). I had no idea what it took, physically or mentally, to be a professional soccer player, especially abroad.

Physically, I can say I underestimated what it would take. Maybe not specifically in terms of strength and conditioning, because really nothing compares to a preseason in university or a spring season conditioning session. I was definitely over confident in my ability to deal with the stress of playing on my body. It’s true in school  you play twice a week but you also have longer periods with no team training. Realistically, in college, you’re playing from August to November and maybe January to May as a spring season. For the past 4 years as a pro I’ve gotten like maybe 8 – 10 weeks free each year. This type of strain forces you to prioritize your recovery. Your body is essentially your livelihood. Suddenly, post training ice baths aren’t that annoying, and dry needling becomes something you look forward to. I’ve found myself really investing in my recovery. I have no problem spending money on my own physio or trainer, or even spending an obscene amount of time on recovery sessions because I now know how important it is to my overall performance.

It’s especially important to take care of yourself because, at this level, injuries are all the more devastating. In college, if you get injured, you can redshirt, everything is taken care of for you. You’re still a part of the team, automatically included in everything. At the pro level, an injury means uncertainty. Uncertain if your club will resign you. It could mean a long pause or potentially the end of your career. You are in charge of your own recovery, it can be your job to find a physio to help you rehab and you have to hope this person can get you back to the elite level. You also have to deal with the pressure from the club to return as quickly as possible while also protecting your own health. Injuries at the highest level are an intense pressure that I had no idea how to deal with until I was in it. An injury at the wrong time could threaten your season, and potentially your career. So, there’s a certain extra pressure to protect your body that comes with being a pro that the everyday care free college athlete is protected from. 

I was woefully ill prepared for the pro life mentally. Of course, there’s dealing with the pressures to perform, and the heightened comparison between your teammates as everyone is gunning for a select few spots. But, this was expected. What caught me off guard was the loneliness and isolation that comes from playing abroad. Now, it’s not loneliness in the typical sense of truly being by yourself. It’s more of feeling out of place. Like you are a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite match the set. Some of it is quite obvious like culture differences, language differences, or even differences in playing style. However, what hit me the hardest is the lost relationships of people from home, and the difficulty in building deeper relationships with people I meet here. I was so swept up in the excitement of moving abroad I didn’t really stop to consider what I was moving away from. I was putting hundreds of thousands of miles between me and engagement parties, weddings, baby showers, promotions, graduations, birthdays, holidays and any big moments with my loved ones back home. It’s easy to lose touch with people when you are living on another continent 10 months out of the year. I can admit it’s not impossible to upkeep these relationships, and maybe that’s what hurts the most. I didn’t put in enough effort to keep them and neither did some of my friends. That’s totally ok I don’t  blame them and I hope they don’t blame me. We are adults now with lives, some with kids and husbands and real jobs, not this made up one I have. I will admit that empathy and understanding don’t make the hurt any less. Watching your friends’ biggest moments through Instagram, while you experience your biggest professional moments without them is painful.

I’m almost glad I was under prepared mentally and physically for playing professionally. There’s something almost exciting about having your expectations almost completely destroyed. For me, it allowed me to grow and discover things about myself I never would’ve known before. That’s not to say I have only learned about myself or appreciated my lowest moments like injury or isolation. I have built some amazing connections that I know will last distance and time. I’ve competed against and with some amazing players in the last four years. The best memories that I have from the past 4 years were born out of some of the toughest experiences. So I honestly can’t wait for what I have yet to learn in the next four.