The Price to Play: Aubree Incardone
I started playing soccer when I was three years old. My parents put me in gymnastics as well, but it wasn’t long before I only wanted to play soccer. Soccer is truly a beautiful sport to me, especially as a forward – I love that there is so much freedom and creativity in the attack, but I also love how strong and relentless you have to be when defending. From a young age, I found myself being in love with every aspect of the game. I also love being a part of a team. Some of the best friendships I’ve made are because of soccer. There’s something really special about suffering through the hardships together and also getting to celebrate together after achievements.
Many athletes can relate to having struggled with injuries. But, I have had to persevere through an unusually long list of injuries throughout my soccer career. When I was 12, I broke my nose and my big toe in the same game, but doctors weren’t able to fix my nose because my growth plates were still open. Then, when I was 14, I tore my right ACL and meniscus right after getting invited to the Regional Pool, a goal I was over the moon about achieving and even more devastated about not going after my injury. At 15, I partially tore my hamstring and was out for 6 months. At 16, I tore my left ACL and meniscus, putting me out of soccer for another whole year. When I got into college, I partially tore my hamstring again the spring of my freshman year. I worked my butt off to get back to soccer once again, but I was starting to doubt my body and feeling betrayed by it. Then, in the spring of my sophomore year, I tore my hamstring tendon completely from the bone.
This is called a hamstring avulsion, and it is a serious and rare injury in which one or all of your hamstring tendons detach from the ischial tuberosity (your sit bone). I was devastated, but giving up on soccer was not an option for me. The surgeon told me that I would most likely be out for 6 months after surgery, which was frustrating, but I had been out longer for other injuries. Little did I know that after my surgery, I would re-tear my hamstring and need a second repair surgery only a month later. Doctors, physical therapists, and trainers had not really dealt with this injury in a high-level athlete, and I did not know a single athlete that I could reach out to to ask for guidance on this injury. Twice in my recovery of this injury did I strain my hamstring again, which started to mess with my head. Was soccer for me? Was this God telling me to quit the sport I loved, even after all the extremely hard work I had put in to get back to playing? I had no trust in my body. I was afraid of every twinge of pain in my hamstring, every movement that would stretch it too far, every time I started to sprint – I had an intense fear that my body was going to fail me once again. But, this past spring season of 2021, I returned to full-contact play after two years of having to sit out of the sport I loved.
Each injury had a similar wave of emotions. Panic, devastation, anger, despair, sadness, and always I would wonder why that injury would happen to me. These emotions would happen after the initial injury, and then again throughout the recovery process. But, that didn’t matter to me because I never considered quitting soccer. I wanted to play so badly. I couldn’t end my career when I still felt like I had unfinished business on the field. The hardest injury for me was my hamstring avulsion. I was so angry with my body, with life, and with God, because it just did not seem fair that as soon as I started to get back to playing, something would happen and take away my ability to play again. It was an extremely hard cycle on me physically, mentally, and emotionally. I never thought about quitting until the very last time I injured my hamstring, which was at the beginning of this year. It was a very strange injury, it appeared out of nowhere it seemed and caused the distal attachment of my hamstring to swell up and hurt. I felt the most defeated I had ever felt in that moment, because I truly thought that was the end for me. It was my senior year and if my hamstring was even partially torn again, I would have to quit. It wouldn’t make sense to keep going at that point. Fortunately, and by the grace of God, my hamstring was not torn, so I was able to quickly recover and got to play in my first collegiate games with UNLV.
I think what has defined me as an athlete and person are all the times I picked myself up after falling to my lowest points mentally and physically. There were people that told me they would have quit years ago if they were in my shoes. But I felt deep within myself that my journey with soccer wasn’t done yet. Injuries had stolen so much from me, yet coincidentally they also gave me things like patience, perspective, and made me appreciate the ability to play soccer tenfold. There were so many days and nights that I cried and felt a sorrow so deep in my heart because I knew how badly I wanted to play yet I couldn’t.
For so long I felt like I never got to reap any of the benefits of my hard work. I struggled with anxiety that my body would fail me, I struggled with not believing I was good enough because I had missed out on years of training and playing, I struggled with feeling like I wasn’t a part of the team because I was always a “cheerleader” and never a player, and I struggled with having to ignore teammates/people that didn’t believe in me because they didn’t know me or understand what I had been through.
If I could, I would tell my younger self that she’s on the path that she’s supposed to be on and that things will get better. I would tell her to not doubt herself so much, because the strength it took to get through everything she had been through and will go through is beyond what she can imagine. I would tell my younger self that she will never regret all of the time, effort, hard work, blood, sweat, and many tears it took to get to where she will be. Finally getting to play has made it all worth it, and I would want little Aubree to know that.
I’ve faced adversity with injuries, multiple coaching staff changes, with teammates, but if I didn’t have the support group I have, I would be in a different place than I am right now. I am so thankful for my parents, my whole family, my best friends, my coaches at UNLV, my trainers, mentors, and the staff at Elevate Sports for being people that have lifted me up in my darkest times. Being able to lean on people that believe in you no matter what and that know and love you is so important. Don’t go through the hard times thinking you have to do it all by yourself.
