Photo Credit: © Can Stock Photo / GekaSkr
The drumline started banging away and Butch the Cougar—the team’s mascot—ran around the field like a crazy person, working to get everyone psyched for the game. Then, I spotted her. My daughter, Marin—number two—running through the tunnel and onto the pitch for Washington State University to play in the much-anticipated game versus the best women’s college soccer team in the country, Stanford.
As I watched her run and yell and generally behave the way athletes do when they’re about to compete, I couldn’t help but think back to how this all started—a little 5-year-old girl in pig tails and a logo’d T-shirt sucking her thumb on the side of a grassy parks and recreation field in our hometown of Medina, Ohio.
It’s too much of stretch to say she was in love from the first touch. Rather, our community—all the fine folks at our parks and recreation department, then the local soccer association and eventually the high school team—did a great job of nurturing her along, giving her the time, space, and freedom to enjoy the game and her teammates. All those post-game ice cream cones and team sleep-overs and seemingly do-or-die high school games had led to this moment—3,000 miles away from where it all started.