#she is known as goalie girl or goalie gf | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

futuredrmedic · 5 years

Text

“Life is a team sport”

I never learned how to lose. Not that I didn’t face adversity or struggles, I just didn’t know how to lose. I was a skilled goalie from day 1, in hockey and soccer, making use of my innate ability to always be in the way. I was a bad team specialist. I loved playing for bad teams and knowing that more often than not I was the reason behind the win. Until I wasn’t.

I went four seasons straight without allowing a goal in soccer, when I finally allowed one I didn’t know how to handle it and whacked my own head against the goal post in frustration. If I remember correctly we didn’t even lose, I just got beat for the first time. Hating myself unless I was perfect became an unhealthy pattern for me. It continued with hockey, I picked it up a little later but I was a natural talent with the potential to really do something with it. I played for a college coach who told me (as a senior in college) if he’d seen me a few years sooner I would’ve had a full ride. He didn’t mean to break me with that comment, he meant it as an encouragement but boy did it throw me. My life had gone totally of course when my parents decided to move to Central America and home school us and this was just another thing I missed.

In 2015 I got into one medical school, a DO school in the south, and for a lot of reasons I decided I needed to wait a little bit (some day I’ll get around to writing that up) but one of the factors (not a huge one but a factor) was hockey. A new women’s pro league was starting, the current (no longer existing) league had openings, and I just might have a chance to play pro. I moved to New England, I started an expensive grad program that I was unfortunately unable to finish due to finances and some personal shit related to an abusive relationship. I didn’t make the team. I was among the top few at the tryouts in performance and I was confident, but I didn’t have college play for them to look at, my high level performance at tryouts could’ve been a fluke and they weren’t willing to take the risk (for what it’s worth I don’t think they won another game after that- not that I could’ve changed it, I’m just smug about it)

I wound up playing with a D (LOW) level team because the season had already started and all the high level teams were full. I was rehabbing an old shoulder injury that was acting up and I was MISERABLE. I had a losing streak of like 10 games. I was allowing horrible goals (fwiw d level shots are flukey and I still allow weird goals when I skate with d teams). My abusive girlfriend told me it looked like it was the right level for me. I had just been cut from a professional team and she was telling me this was where I belonged. I continued to sink.

I never learned to lose. I was an excellent player, I was talented, usually the best on a team. But I wasn’t any kind of team mate. I’d slam my stick when I’d get scored on. One time I threw my mask AFTER A WIN because I wasn’t happy with the game. I was miserable, I was a bad teammate, I hated the game and I hated my life.

I got back on an ambulance, I’d been an emt for 6(ish) years in New Jersey before moving here, I’d only done 911 there, doing transports was new and honestly kind of boring, but it started to bring me back to myself, my personality started to resemble what it had been, and everything started to fall into place. I decided to go to paramedic school, being a doc was still my end game but I loved ems and I wanted to do more, learn more, be better. One of the girls I had been playing hockey with invited me to play a tournament with her and a bunch of the people I’d played with the season before (they were largely not happy about it). I never saw the abusive ex gf again after I left for that tournament.

That tournament was the start of everything changing and staying that way. We won the first game 4-0. As a team. They hustled their asses off to help me keep my shutout. Years ago it would’ve felt like “mine” but this was “ours”. That night one of my team mates sat me down and told me she used to hate me and hadn’t wanted me there at all. She played defense and always thought I was slamming my stick because I was mad at her, I wasn’t, I was mad at myself but I also resolved to stop doing that.

We were a rag tag group, short a few skaters. The next morning, all hungover, we beat a team that was expected to steam roll us, we lost game 3 but went to the finals. In the finals we lost 2-3 to the third team we had played. The game winning goal was one I should’ve had. We lost. It was my fault. And we danced. The whole team danced on the blue line in our silver medals and to this day that’s one of the biggest wins of my life. It was the day I changed forever

I’m still a bad team specialist. That following season I was brought in to play (along with my defenseman then girlfriend, now wife) on a team that hadn’t won in quite some time. We were told 1 year. It was three. It was a frustrating season. We won exactly one game. I often wanted to quit. But I refused to show it. My reputation stopped being the angry goalie and became an excellent teammate. I sought to build, to fix chemistry problems, to make the team better.

I got a severe concussion that almost took the game from me and almost crushed me in medic school (head injury + pharm and cardiology = a bad time). I was extremely lucky to have instructors that noticed that I was more functional early in the evening and the accommodated that while I recovered. It all started to come together for me. Hockey was a team sport. It didn’t matter how talented I was if I was a terrible teammate. EMS is a team sport, you have to be able to rely on your partner, on your supervisors, on PD and fire, and they have to be able to rely on you. LIFE IS A TEAM SPORT.

This past season was just as bad as last year. I played great, we kept losing. We won one game, tied a few, lost a ton. My frustration showed occasionally but I was still known for being an excellent teammate. For hyping everyone up, for leaving it all on the ice for the team and not just my own performance. I grew into an excellent teammate, a leader, a better person, because of a game and because of a job.

I sustained another serious concussion this past February. I’m still recovering. I had another opportunity to try out for a pro team and was again bitten by my lack of college play- but that’s ok- I don’t need to go pro and won’t likely pursue it again (though I can’t say I would turn down an opportunity). I took the MCAT this weekend after lots of encouragement from some friends -my TEAM (and a disappointing lack of encouragement or acknowledgement from some other friends. I went to drill with the National Guard on Sunday, and then I went into work 11 hours early because someone was sick and needed to go home- because that’s my team now and I couldn’t leave him there sick when I was home and able to go in. Yesterday during the middle portion of my 35 I had more than one coworker comment that I was know at work for being easy going and super pleasant to work with. I couldn’t have asked for a better compliment. I know I’m a good medic, that my skills are good, that I know my shit. But being told I’m easy to work with coming from where I did was huge. Because life is a team sport, and at this point in my life, I am finally an excellent teammate.

#mcat #medicine #hockey #goalie #life is a team sport #mcat prep #paramedic #ems #emt

2 notes · View notes