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She might be the toughest athlete in Dallas. I\u2019m talking about the Canadian, Rylee Foster, the goalkeeper for Dallas Trinity FC. <\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t yet know, Dallas Trinity FC is our city\u2019s professional women\u2019s soccer team. Now in its second season, the team plays in the Cotton Bowl. I\u2019ve been to several games so far, last year and this, taken my family. If you like sports, it\u2019s a fun, inexpensive night out. <\/p>\n
On Saturday, the team will help close out the State Fair as it hosts Club Am\u00e9rica from Mexico City in the inaugural State Fair of Texas Cl\u00e1sico. It\u2019ll be a huge game, maybe the biggest in the team\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
In August, before the game against Brooklyn FC, just before kickoff, I spoke with Jim Neil, founder and CEO of the team. He talked about the team with intense passion and pride. Not a passive owner, the guy is definitely bought in. His whole family is bought in. Most of the Neil family works for the team in some capacity.<\/p>\n
He told me about Foster, the team\u2019s new goalie. \u201cShe\u2019s great, such a fighter. She\u2019s really fun to watch,\u201d Neil said. \u201cOh, and she\u2019s also hard of hearing. She wears hearing aids but not during the game.\u201d <\/p>\n
Opinion<\/p>\n
By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n Foster comes from a family with disabilities. Her mother is deaf; her sister, like her, is also hard of hearing. Foster is the first athlete with hearing loss to sign with a Division I professional women\u2019s soccer team. <\/p>\n But that\u2019s not why I think she might be the toughest athlete in Dallas. <\/p>\n Like so many professional athletes, Foster is a journeyman: Liverpool, Everton, Durham, from England to Phoenix to Dallas. To give your mind and body to such a physical game takes a special sort of human. I\u2019ve been around enough professional athletes to know that it takes something special to endure that kind of life, that for most professional athletes such a life is far more arduous than it is glamorous.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s also not what makes her Dallas\u2019 toughest athlete.<\/p>\n You see, in 2021 she was on holiday in Finland, her first real vacation in years, when she almost died in a car accident. The weather had turned, her seat belt failed, and she was thrown through the windshield. She broke her neck in seven places. One second a world-class athlete, in the blink of an eye she was fighting for her life.<\/p>\n Dallas Trinity FC goalkeeper Rylee Foster nearly died in a car accident. Contributing columnist Joshua Whitfield says her comeback makes her the toughest athlete in Dallas.<\/p>\n Dallas Trinity FC<\/p>\n Which is why, when I got a chance to sit down and talk with her recently, before anything else, I couldn\u2019t help but ask a simple question: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you quit?\u201d <\/p>\n That question might have revealed more about me than about her. Incredulous that anyone wouldn\u2019t call it a career after such a terrible accident, I couldn\u2019t immediately understand why on earth she simply didn\u2019t go home and play it safe the rest of her life. Lucky to be alive, lucky to walk, why didn\u2019t she just quit?<\/p>\n \u201cTo quit is too easy,\u201d she told me, taking a deep breath, leaning back in her chair. Her words would have sounded like a clich\u00e9 if it weren\u2019t for what she\u2019d been through. <\/p>\n Of course, she admitted there were days she wanted to quit. For a long time, she was fighting merely to regain whatever her new normal would be. Only gradually did the idea that she might return to the field take shape in her mind. But by then it was a different sort of passion than had driven her before.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a burning desire in me,\u201d Foster told me. Talking about her faith and her family, what she called her \u201ccore foundations,\u201d she said, \u201cwe worked our butts off,\u201d her entire family, to get where she was. \u201cI come from people with disabilities,\u201d she said. Working hard, and working hard for one another, was simply the way her family lived. Foster\u2019s sister put her own schooling on hold to care for her in the hospital. What Rylee has achieved, they achieved together. What Rylee suffered, they suffered together. <\/p>\n On the inside of Rylee\u2019s left arm is tattooed the words \u201cYou\u2019ll never walk alone,\u201d the Liverpool FC anthem. She got the tattoo to honor her late grandmother, yet it now honors more.<\/p>\n But the accident also caused her to rediscover her own will, her own desire, at least in a new way. Supported and cared for by family and friends, as she got out of bed, free from that medical contraption called a halo after five months, free from the neck brace five months after that, she asked herself, \u201cWho do I want to be?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is my calling,\u201d she told me, talking about her journey back to soccer. \u201cNow, I get to write the script,\u201d Foster said of her newfound sense of purpose. \u201cThis time it was about me.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s what I mean when I say she\u2019s got my vote for the toughest athlete in Dallas. Maybe a miracle, certainly a lot of grit, Rylee Foster is one of those rare athletes who, once you know their story, you can\u2019t but feel lucky to watch them play. Because hers is a toughness that\u2019s not just physical. It\u2019s interior, spiritual even. <\/p>\n Rylee Foster knows who she is. She\u2019s playing the game for herself. And I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s just that seems to me to be the whole point of the game, the discovery of self. I mean, isn\u2019t that what sports reveal, our character? That\u2019s why I call her tough.<\/p>\n The last question I asked Foster was about the difference between playing soccer at 7 vs. playing soccer at 27. Is there a difference in her joy now as compared to then?<\/p>\n \u201cOh, gosh yes,\u201d she laughed. \u201cMy version of joy now is fullness of life.\u201d Now she plays the game with a wisdom and thankfulness she certainly didn\u2019t have when she was younger.<\/p>\n At least not before she became the toughest athlete in Dallas. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She might be the toughest athlete in Dallas. 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