Soccer….Family Style

Tanya and Mr. Tanya in Frankfurt, en route to Lyon, France for the Women’s World Cup Final.

I make my best mistakes in France. At the 98 World Cup, we accidentally bought a first class rail pass thanks to my complete lack of French language skills. I was broke and out of work, so it was money we didn’t have to spend, but it got us on trains with all the press, which led to my first soccer press gig of being the Midwest stringer photographer for San Francisco Bay Soccer. It got me field press access to the Chicago games of the 1999 Women’s World Cup and field access to a couple USMNT matches, and more than paid for itself.

This year, we purchased conditional semifinal and final tickets for the USWNT in France, not knowing if we’d be able to swing the trip for our family of five. When we looked this Spring, flights were over $1000 per person, and after my concussion related work setbacks for the past 14 months, we decided it was not in the cards. BUT NO ONE BOTHERED TO CANCEL OUR CONDITIONAL TICKETS.

You’d think that would be the first thing we’d do, right? Nope. We’ve been juggling our well established roles as my husband has been heroic in picking up the slack left by my post concussive syndrome unpredictability. Plus, he had purchased the tickets, but he had done it via my account, so the responsibilities for the tickets were a bit up in the air. By the time we realized what we had done, it was way past the deadline to turn the tickets back, and only hours away from the deadline to transfer the tickets to a friend.

Thank goodness for our Sammers Supporters Club family, who stepped up to help claim and sell our semifinal tickets. As we scrambled to deal with our mistake, I proposed an idea: what if instead of going through this again for the final, we planned to GO TO FRANCE and use/deal with the tickets ourselves?

By this time, we realized that 2/3 of our children had expired passports (peak parent fail), but at least that meant that we could only worry about two flights to Europe. This is why Mr. Tanya and I are so well matched as a couple: I come up with the crazy ideas like a last minute trip to France, he does the analysis and research for travel deals that make my wild dreams possible without bankruptcy. The Dude found round trip flight to Europe for under $700 a piece, which is a decent deal for Summer flights even if we had planned and a total bargain for a last minute trip.

48 hours later, I’m sitting in a hotel room in Frankfurt, getting ready for the trek to Lyon for my second Women’s World Cup Final!! (I was in the nosebleeds in 1999). Eternal gratitude for family that can watch our kiddos and kids that can drive themselves to camp (we can discuss the miracle that our 3 kids ages 4, 11, and 16 are all going to or working at the same camp later). Life is crazy as ever, but I’m enjoying the ride 100%.

I was working my way through concussion recovery. I did a power lifting competition in April (took 2nd place!) and I’d been working on the houses I’m rehabbing, going to soccer games as I could tolerate them, when I got an email via my first book, Passionate Soccer Love’s, website: “[pleasantries] In reading that you possess incredible passion for US Soccer and have written extensively about the sport, I thought you could be a potential author for a new book…”

Wait. What?

I’m still at the stage where I’m pleasantly surprised when people find my work. Even better when they like what they read. But as I continued to read the email about how they were interested in an author for a book aimed at MY SON’S age group, I was pretty much over the moon by the time I got through the first of three delicious paragraphs in this opening email.

Several weeks of video interviews, writing submissions, torturous waiting, contract negotiations, and copious anxiety later, my contract is signed, my editor has been met and is another soccer parent who is equally excited about the project, and my Summer is officially devoted to writing!

I’d love to have your thoughts in the comments. Who are the soccer stars, mostly current, but also people who changed the game, who you want to share with kids 10-14? I’m focusing mostly on the Men’s side (with the hopes of a Women’s side edition later) and particularly interested in players with inspiring stories or learning experiences attached to them.

This book is going to move pretty fast, so watch this space for updates!

My concussion happened at the start of PDL season, and right before the World Cup 2018. It broke my heart to break my World Cup streak, but we took a previously planned trip to see my parents in Boston, and that flight wrecked me for days. Airports are full of motion, sound, and bright flashy lights… basically a Concussive’s worst nightmare. The trip to Boston was my first sign that something was really wrong. I slept for half a day and still didn’t feel right. There was no way I could handle an international flight and weeks coping with a foreign language. It was only once I started concussion therapy that I began to take account of all the fabulous things brains do, filtering all the noise and allowing us to function and focus.

Even watching the World Cup on TV was too much for me most days. On days of triple games, I’d prioritize one game to watch with the sound off, and the other games I’d watch if I could, but often I was too exhausted for the third match. I spent a solid portion of the Summer in a dark, silent room. I would watch Des Moines Menace games from my car to block most of the sound and shield from the lights and scoreboard, and still left most games in pain, overstimulated.

Attending the USWNT game last night was a huge victory for my concussion recovery. I was able to enjoy the full 90, without ever having to retreat to first aid with a scarf over my head. I was able to meet and talk to other fans. It was all the things. Next step: attempting to sing for 90 with my Sammers family vs England.

Even as an informed soccer fan, I had no idea how devastating one concussion could be until I sustained one earlier this year. On May 17th, I was on my way to pick up my toddler from preschool on a bright sunny day when my car was rear ended at a stop light on a 30 mph road in suburban Des Moines. I know many of you read this blog for my travel adventures, so I will include that I was hit by an unlicensed 18 year old gang member who was high, and had a machete in the car and a gun that spilled out of his car onto the pavement as the police were questioning him. So peak me.

But I was barely processing that at the time, because moments earlier, I had entered my new, permanent home, the world of the post concussed. I didn’t hit my head, but the jolt of being hit at almost 30 mph at a full stop was enough to slosh my brain into my own skull. I remember the officer who happened to be standing 10 feet from the accident telling me to sit down because there was apparently a sizable difference between how stable I looked and how stable I felt.

I felt dazed. I was perplexed that I couldn’t seem to operate even basic functions of my phone to text my husband and call the preschool. I managed to tell Google to call them after repeated failures at texting. But I was speaking clearly in general, and I was able to drive myself home. Yet, I was confused enough to go to the ER to get checked. They diagnosed me with a mild concussion and sent me home with orders to take it easy for a couple weeks. As I write this, I’m chuckling at how much my definition of “taking it easy” has shifted since that day.

On the day, I thought concussion was something you didn’t want to do repeatedly, but generally, I expected a couple weeks of headache and not much else. My house was on the home tour that weekend, and I didn’t see any reason to cancel. My friends rallied to help with last minute cleaning and gardening, and I felt confident I could sit in a chair and talk about my house.

But I was wrong. I struggled with balance, because of damage to my vestibular system. I found myself getting stuck on words. I tried to use the words “stair tread” at least three times, and each time, two different words would come out of my mouth. I’d know they were the wrong words, but I could not get my brain to connect with the right ones. Word finding was a challenge for months.

My symptoms got worse over time. Around the four week mark, when I was starting to think I was losing my mind, a friend finally connected me to someone who said the magic words: Post Concussive Syndrome (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-concussion-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20353352). She gave me a name for the dizziness, confusion, light and sound sensitivity, vision problems, and anxiety. Even better, she connected me to On With Life Brain Injury Rehab, where I spent the next five months trying to pull my life back together.

I hope to share parts of my recovery with you as I rebuild my stamina for writing and soccer travel. Hopefully, I can help others find help for their concussion recovery. I have come from needing a be in a dark room with no sound and sleeping almost around the clock to writing this from London, fighting a little jet lag, but certainly much closer to my old life than I thought possible for the past several months. With a little luck, some wifi, and hopefully a new power adapter later today (our old one self destructed a few hours ago) I’ll do my best to share this journey.

***Reading is still extremely difficult for me. Eye movement is exhausting, and oh the magical things your brain does to read! Sorry, these posts won’t be proofread for a while, if ever. ❤

These three…that’s what it’s all about. Happy World Cup game day everyone!

Oh…that awkward moment the internet tries to claim you’re a shameless self promoter and you realize you haven’t updated your blog since August. But that’s the thing. When I heard Noah Davis was working on a story about people who’d struggled with American Outlaws, I didn’t race to talk to him. Truth is, I discovered at MLS All Star game (my last post) that we are finally expecting our third child this April. This is not the time in my life that I need to create havoc for my family. But it’s been bothering me that I stopped writing about the game I love.

What’s not in the article is that when I announced my pregnancy to my friends via Facebook, someone took the time to create two Twitter accounts to harass me and announced my pregnancy on Twitter before I wanted it to be public. The account talked about my family in unfriendly ways, and at the game in Hartford last fall, and the breach of privacy left me feeling vulnerable. I got the account blocked, but the invasion of my privacy stuck with me and I didn’t want to write any more. It was only made worse when an Outlaw friend of mine private messaged me that the chapter leader (edit: I believe Drew is now ex president) of AO Knoxville was bragging that he’d been behind the harassing Twitter accounts. I sent AO national this information, but their response was that the account had already been suspended by Twitter (at my request). Here was yet another opportunity for AO to reiterate their own harassment policy and back it up with consequences, and they neglected to step up.

So I just stopped posting. I stopped promoting my book. I was exhausted from the pregnancy, so I told myself it was because I didn’t have time, but in my heart, it made me sick that a group I loved and helped grow for so many years had blackened my love of the game. My experiences at the hands of American Outlaws made me not want to talk about soccer…and that’s wrong. It was wrong of me to only talk about it via private message to national leadership. When Noah Davis contacted me and said the article was practically written, but requested a comment, I thought this was a way I could live with myself again. He assured me his message was not to tear AO down, but to talk about the issues that were weakening this growing organization in the hopes that the subsequent dialog would build a better soccer culture.

Flash forward to today. I read the first sentence and closed the window. The couple lines I envisioned in paragraph six was transformed into the reality that I was headlining the article. This is not what I needed at 35/40 weeks pregnant. It took several hours for me to work up the nerve to read it, bolstered by the quotes sent by friends reminding me why I spoke out in the first place….there were plenty of people who shared experiences off the record, but if people were going to harass me on the internet over a pregnancy announcement, I should at least put my voice to good use.

It’s not perfect. There are inaccuracies. But the overall message is on target. Love me or hate me… there’s no room for harassment in sports. Women, all women, should be comfortable being a part of AO. Davis spoke to me and I shared my real experiences. If that upsets you, I don’t know what to say. If your experiences are positive, I’m so happy for you. AO is so vastly different from coast to coast, and my great experiences have outweighed my bad experiences, but they don’t cancel the bad stuff out. How can we have #UniteandStrengthen as our battle cry and not want to do better at all chapters?

The one critical point I want to make is that my family is still AO active. What I said about leaving AO was regarding stepping down as a chapter leader. I didn’t feel like I could be a part of leadership when I didn’t feel like AO Nat’s had my back. I want a strong supporter culture for US Soccer, and there’s no arguing that AO has a place in that culture. We can do better, and I hope the discussion that follows this article is less about denial and more about what the best American Outlaws and the best US Soccer supporter culture looks like.

My kids have been pretty low key after chasing around Brazil for three weeks. The three of us haven’t aspired to much other than unpacking, catching up with laundry and friends, and of course, watching soccer. My son, having found fame via his goal celebration, has been telling me he wants to become a YouTuber and make videos for the internet (yes, he’s still six). Well son, consider the gauntlet thrown. My friend, Elizabeth Vantre, posted this trailer for today’s semifinal that’s pretty freaking awesome. Check it out: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10204110052052439