Tough Year

I can’t believe how much time has come and gone since the last entry, which was when the Irish team was in Iceland. Since then I was lucky enough to heal myself up over Christmas, sign on with a fantastic new team in Norway called Kolbotn, and go to France with Ireland and start and play almost the full match against one of the top 10 teams in the world in February. I was in Spain for training camp with Kolbotn in March and then it was back to Vancouver for the Western Canada Soccer Showcase in April. It went incredibly smoothly, despite having doubled in size and having teams involved from as far away as Manitoba! Back to Norway it was in April after the Showcase was finished, and that is when my injury nightmare began. It started with pulling my calf in a game with our second team which I was playing in to get back in the groove from missing a few of our Toppserien matches when I was in Vancouver. Since then the injury has plagued me, first for almost 2 months in Norway, which I managed to heal up in time to get fit for our training camp with Ireland in the US this summer. I lasted about 3 weeks of intense training in the US before the injury flared up again and now after a couple of weeks of rest I am trying to get myself into tip top shape again for the last 5 matches of our Toppserien season and for the possibility of getting called into camp with Ireland for 2 important Qualifier Matches in September. I have to say that this year of being injured and feeling like my body won’t allow me to give 110 percent and the constant worry of something flaring up has really had me questioning if I want to keep going.  I am grateful to be “living the dream” as so many of my office bound friends tell me, but there is a large deal of sacrifice that is involved, mostly financially (and I’m not talking having to drive a beater versus a beamer…more along the lines of how am I going to pay for physio and for dinner?), which is so completely worth it when I am on that field competing and learning. But having to spend so much time on the sidelines and the mental anguish as much as the physical has just started to wear on me a little, and for the first time I see stopping as a real and true possibility. I tell myself though that I have overcome so much including injuries that felt just as neverending and devastating as this last one with my calf/achilles so to just stick with it. I head back to Norway at the end of August, so I guess I’ll just have to see how this Fall goes…