N O N F I C T I O N 21
the most shots. What her team builds on this field every day is a legacy; a legacy strengthened each time the fastest person on the team overlaps the pack and comes back to encourage the one who is dead last. It strengthens each time two players crash to the floor in a tackle and pull each other up, or when the coach gives a shoulder a squeeze and words of affirmation after a hard loss. On this ground is where a player passes through refining fire to be transformed into not just an elite athlete, but an unbreakable vessel of perseverance, discipline, and integrity. Here between battered nets is where she takes risks, is hurled to the ground, rises back up, and falls again. But this doesn’t faze her—she knows the iron circle of her team waits to break her fall, dust her off, and send her back into the fray. The field eagerly awaits tomorrow as its girls leave and the last notes of a whistle hang in the stillness. Tomorrow it will come alive again—balls will fly, sweat will drop, shouts will echo. For now, the only sound is a quiet, rhythmic pinging of net hitting post.