Last week, at the end of a particularly brutal practice — the kind that makes you cry into your goggles and makes you want to amputate your legs just so they stop burning — we decided to do some shout-outs. This essentially consisted of our coach shouting out someone’s name, and the team responding with various positive contributions they have noticed from that person. I had so many compliments to throw at my teammates, but when I thought about myself, I had nothing.

As someone with a chronic lower back injury (multi-level herniations), I deal with pain on a daily basis. I spend a lot of time trying to keep my body from falling apart, and it sucks. I’m currently sporting an intricate KT tape job that is quite literally holding together and supporting my spine. Besides the obvious physical component of injury, there is a far subtler psychological component. Athletic injuries can spur feelings like sadness, isolations, irritation, anger, frustrations, lack of motivation, etc. For an athlete, the disappointment of not being physically able to participate fully in the sport, combined with the difficulty of staying positive on the sidelines, can create a loss of identity. This void in their identity creates a fear of who they really are as a person, because realistically, many athletes, including myself, have been swimming laps or shooting hoops for as long as they can remember. Take that basketball or that tennis racquet out of their hands, and suddenly they do not know who they are or whether they will ever recover completely and return to what they know.

But Injury also marginalizes athletes — you miss a hard set, and then an entire practice, and suddenly you feel like a slacker. You want so badly to be putting in the hard yards with the rest of your teammates, and instead, you’re spending hours receiving treatment and popping painkillers that make you loopy. It’s hard to stay positive through injury, and it's even harder alone.

When my turn for a shout out rolled around, I was sure there was going to be silence. I did not have one positive thing to say about myself — I had battled through injury the entire week and had barely made it through the morning’s practice. I had watched my teammates absolutely destroy the sets throughout the week; meanwhile, the only thing I was destroying was my body. That morning was one of my lowest points, so when my teammates began shouting out a whole host of positives about me, everything from how my sprinting was on fire to how I was responding to injury, I started to cry. And because that’s the most insane, batshit crazy reaction to positive feedback, I tried to hide it with a smile, which was probably the ugliest type of crying anyone had ever seen. And they still rallied around me: an injured, crazy, ugly-crier.

This is why I love my team, why I need these amazing women. They’ll have your back, even when you don’t have your own. They will love and support you unconditionally, at your best and your worst. I could write so many more sappy, sentimental words about my team, but I’ll leave you with a quote.

In the words of Mr. Kanye West:

"Ain't nobody fresher than my mothaf*ckin' clique.”