An athlete's body is their weapon. That combined with their mind is responsible for every play, every point, every victory. You protect that weapon with everything in your power. But protection does not ensure lack of injury. Freak accidents occur. Blood is spilled on the floor, ankles break, ligaments tear, brains hit skulls. That is the price an athlete pays.

My body started shutting down when I was twelve-years-old. Somehow puberty had not only given me the usual acne and chest but had blessed me with a multitude of other issues.

My ligaments and tendons were too flexible. I had no cartilage in my knees so my patellas refused to track right. Every joint in my lower extremities ached. Ankles collapsed regularly and randomly. Hips were misaligned and femurs were internally rotated.

What happens to an athlete when the body you were given is slowly breaking down?

You try to stay ahead of what seems to be a losing game. Physical therapy exercises, double knee and ankle braces, leuko tape to keep the patellas in place, kinesio tape wrapped in a spiral around my legs to un-rotate femurs.

You play defense.

Ignorantly enough, I kept playing.

I started sports at age two. I played everything imaginable. Soccer, ballet, basketball, volleyball, softball, t-ball, track, and gymnastics.

When something is ingrained in you, it's not like you can just stop.

No matter how hard your body is telling you no.

Until my freshman year of high school, I held the utmost respect for every coach I had ever played for.

It wasn't that they were kind and nonchalant about winning. They would yell and stomp, and make us run suicides every day.

The thing I took for granted is that they respected me as a person, an athlete.

High school sports taught me two important things.

1. Never let a coach make you feel like less than a person.
2. Emotional scars last longer than any fractured bone or torn muscle.

I came home from my first day of high school sports sobbing.

I would categorize myself as a tough individual so crying was not really in my repertoire.

I had never been treated so poorly in my life.

Flash forward to my senior year, I was sitting on a different bench during a different sport with a different coach, feeling the exact same way.

I felt like scum.

I felt worthless.

Along with the multitude of my pre-existing conditions my high school sports career was plagued with injuries.

Freshman year, I fractured the growth plate in my ankle.

Sophomore year, I received a severe concussion (my second) and went uncleared for ten months.

Junior year, I was diagnosed with a patella, ACL, MCL tear. Thankfully, the patella was the only thing actually torn.

Senior year, I received my third concussion and sprained my ankle so badly the bones inside hit each other.

I never finished a full sports season.

As I look back and reflect upon my experiences I realize that to those coaches, I was merely a tool.

I was not an athlete.

I was not a person.

I was merely a device that allowed them to get closer to their goal of fame and victory.

And what do you do with a device that's broken?

You throw it away.

I'd like to think that if I had realized how little my coaches thought of me back then, I would have quit. But I can't be sure. I loved sports so much I was willing to put my body in harm's way every single practice, every single game.

To them, it didn't matter if I was an asset off the court or field. If I wasn't scoring or defending, I was dead weight.

I listened to the comments one coach made on the sideline while I dutifully sat on the bench, injured, screaming my lungs for my teammates who could actually play.

"Pathetic."

"Disgusting."

"Suck."

These were just a few of the words that he uttered to himself during a game.

I remember thinking how old is this man? Why is he so immature? Does he have any respect or kindness at all?

I thought back to earlier in the game when I had comforted a teammate who he had pulled out of the game, aggressively chastised, and left her to sob incoherently on the bench.

I somehow tried to explain to the underclassman to not take it personally and that I'm sure he didn't mean it and blah blah blah.

"Why is he so cruel?" she gulped, tears flooding down her face onto her jersey.

I had no answer.

Flashback to the day of my second and worse concussion. I knocked myself out and woke up in a pool of my own blood, with the concerned and terrified faces of my teammates looking down on me.

I didn't know what had occurred right until later when a teammate reached out to me.

After I left the court, stained with blood and shaking, my coach came onto the court and before they had even cleaned my pool of blood from the floor, he said to my teammates, "Wow, she will really do anything to get out of running the mile (our conditioning)."

I wasn't cleared for ten months and I would have run a mile every single damn day of those ten if it meant I had no more headaches, no more tests, no more doctors visits.

After your body breaks, the coaches have no use for you. You're worthless.

And I started to believe that I really was.

My entire high school career I had people telling me that without my body and athletic ability I was nothing.

However, I don't recall an athletic session of the SAT.

I didn't have to run a damn mile to get into college.

No amount of suicides could have helped me pass organic chemistry and make the dean's list.

There is still so much pain when I look back on the experiences I had with those coaches who made me feel meaningless and stupid. But now I look back and think--

Yes, I have scars, physical and emotional. But those will heal and remind me to treat people with kindness and compassion.

And well, those coaches...those coaches will always be assholes.

A special thanks to all the amazing coaches who actually treated me like a real person. Thank you: Tracy Speer, Kathy Baehl, Heidi Kleinrichert, Julie McNamara, Deb Brough, Chris Brough, Joe Leja, Rebecca Merriam, Scott Shipman, Stuart Oberley, Bernie Lohmuller, Dave Schultheis, Phil Schultheis, and Mike Stoffel.

Thank you for believing in me.