The End of Things

It’s the last game of our season, of my whole athletic career, although I don’t know it yet. 

My tongue is thick and dry, chafing against my worn black mouth guard. I suck it against the hard roof of my palate until I feel the urge to gag. But I don’t retch. I’m too tired. The air here in southern Maryland hangs still and heavy over the Bermuda grass field. 

It's double-overtime in our semi-finals game, sudden death, during my senior year of college. Losing this game means immediate elimination. I haven’t been subbed out all match and we’re defending our third penalty corner in a row.  

I’m crouched in a runner’s sprint alongside the goal cage next to two other players and the goalie herself. Since it’s overtime there are less of us on the field than normal. The opposing team lines the white half-circle around the net, poised to rip off a shot, poised to score. If they make this, they win. If they make this, my time as a collegiate athlete is over. Forever. Field hockey will disappear from my life—the sweat, the blood, the injuries, the fun, the joy, the wildness, the years—all will vanish, shrink, to a blip on my undergraduate radar, not even worth mentioning in a resume. 

From my crouch I heave to drag breath deep into my lungs. I can feel the sear of the sun along my hair’s zig-zag part. Today I have three intersecting French braids—nothing will slip. My foot taunts the white paint line—leg tensed. Inside my turf shoe one toenail blackens with each dull throb of my pulse. I clench my stick in my right hand—sprinting position.

I’m panting things out like, “Let’s go ladies!” and “We’ve got this! Heart and pain!” to the young women next to me, just as breathless as I am. I’m a captain, servant, and leader. It’s my job to keep us going. My legs feel like rain barrels, but adrenaline still surges. My personhood has been boiled down, sharpened and honed, and all that’s left is this will, this intent: reach the ball before their lead striker takes the shot. Everything we have been trying to build together is laid out before me, all factors culminating in this singular moment.  

At the last time-out, girls on the sidelines ran to bring us our water bottles. Our coach, Katie, brought us in, gestures snapping with emphasis. She said something like, stay focused and we need to be passing up our strong side, but time-out was a blur of chugging water and shaking my thigh muscles to keep the muscles fluid, warm. In our huddle I glanced around and noticed that Maria’s eyes had gone vacant in the heat. I clacked our sticks together, bringing her gaze to mine. We got this, I mouthed. We all had to believe it, or it wouldn’t work. Rachel, my fellow captain, gasped beside me, grimacing as she folded her toes against the ground to stretch. Coach spoke again, first two minutes, she told us, let’s finish this in the first two minutes. Then she crossed her arms and headed back to the bench. It was up to me to sound the final rallying cry. 

Field hockey balls are solid, hard plastic—and can be hit in the 80 mph range. I’ve broken two fingers and have permanent calcifications on several of my metacarpals that ache cripplingly when hit the wrong way. I’ve gotten a concussion, broken a toe, and lost at least 4 toenails. Then there are the countless scrapes, twinged muscles, blisters. Preseason is plagued with diarrhea and ice baths, lactic acid build-ups, and heat stroke. 

Then there are the bruises. Field hockey really makes art of the bruise. They bloom like tropical flowers on shins and thighs. The tender center is a dot of stark white—the shock of the ball’s initial contact. A perfect ring of red surrounds it, a teacup of pain. From here, color fans out in a nebula of purple and green like black marker chromatography. Upon contact, the smacked flesh immediately goose-pimples despite the body’s overall heat. Lightly textured, richly colored, bruise art. 

In the huddle I take another quick gulp of water and reiterate the well-worn phrases, “Alright ladies, we’re going to go out there and give everything we have. It’s going to take a lot of heart and a lot of pain. We are going to play hard. But most importantly we’re going to have fun and we’ll do it together. Hawks on three: One, Two, Three, HAWKS!” It’s ritual, it’s oath, it has to be enough to ignite a final push, to get us all to pusher harder, dig deeper. It’s begun to fascinate me, even then, the ways language carries a power greater than mind, than need, than exhaustion. Our success or our failure hung on those words, and their ability to garner absolute investment. 

All twenty-three of us press our sticks together, shoulders in, body to body. We chorus on “HAWKS!” and part ways. The seven of us overtime players jog back out to our positions on the field, while the rest disperse to stand in a tense-edged row on the sideline. 

Our fans are their customary mix of rowdy, often drunk, soccer players who yell and holler from camping chairs and blankets along the edge of the field, along with the committed family members who come regularly with cameras and signs. Today however, all sit quiet. I’m praying that we get the ball out of the penalty circle—that it’ll make it to one of our forwards who will be racing in from midfield. I can’t do many more of these. I’m the “fly” so it’s my job to flat-out sprint at the top of the circle as that same opponent winds up to take a huge shot on goal. I’m supposed to cut down the angles, to make her hesitate, to get my stick there, if I can travel fast enough. I know at least one of these penalty corners is my fault: foot-foul. But I am so, so tired. I have reached the edge. 

The goalie thumps her stick against the wooden back of the cage. It’s nearly time. Through her mask, her gaze remained fixed on the inserter of the other team: watching, waiting. I glance at Rachel, whose fingers grip the coarse black weave of the net beside my head. We make eye contact and breathe. I know her shin splints are killing her. She has a small, delicate body, and sports have been a strain—muscles and tendons unraveling.

“GO!” The ball is passed. The goalie gives the signal. I take off. 

Acid burns in my legs, in my lungs, in my arms. I’m sprinting, sprinting, sprinting—straight at their main striker who’s getting passed the ball, who’s going to try and slam it right back in my direction. The direction I’m trying to block. 

I’ve been up against this player all game. She’s thick, the largest player in our conference, with a full sleeve of tattoos on each well-muscled arm. I’ve never been anything but sturdy, solid from childhood, but I have had to struggle not to be pushed around by her. I dig deeper, arrowing toward her. Go. Gogogo. I’m snarling across final few feet between us, stick outstretched, 10ft, 8ft, 6ft. My hip flexor strains—the muscle still tight from when I ripped it last season. But this has to be enough. The striker receives the ball—5ft. Her body twists as she winds up for the swing, stick high in the air behind her head—4ft. I’m closer, but not close enough. Shit. She’s going to get off a full shot, and I just have to hope I stop it somehow. 

Please. I'm praying in that tiny private voice, so small it goes nearly unnoticed. Please, don’t let this shot hit me in the throat. As always, in a speed nearly too rapid-fire to gauge or recall, that possibility flashes through my mind as I charge forward: me on my back, suffocating under crushed voice box, straining to breathe until the world goes dark. 

Sheer willpower and I lunge the last few steps. Thwack!-Thwack!

She shoots; I make contact. I deflected the main shot! This is good. This means I could have stopped the—Wesleyan erupts into cheers. 

It went in. I was the last to touch it. I deflected the shot. And it went in.

My stick thuds from my grip. And I'm on my knees in the grass, head in hands. My body shakes. My face is hot and wet. Everything that has held me together dissolves. It’s a reaction I would never have had publicly if I could help it. But it was uncontrollable. An unspooling. It’ll be commented on later, when I’m out that weekend and run into those who were watching. 

It takes my team a bit to find me because I’m near the Wesleyan players who have mobbed together, screaming and jumping. Then my team arrives. My own women surround me. Hands are in my hair, gripping my arms, dozens of voices soothe and weep. We're all pressed together and I'm up off my feet. Someone has grabbed my stick and together we make our way to the sideline. I find Rachel and we hug in silence. 

In our post-game huddle, we peel off socks and shin guards from throbbing feet. Coach speaks at length, but my brain reels without recording. By the time we finally gather our equipment and head toward the locker room, most of the crowd is gone. My family couldn’t make it, school too far away, but my boyfriend Christian is there. He waited, although I didn’t expect him to, lanky tallness hitched to the side against a crutch. 

He hugs me briefly, an arm rubbing up and down my soaked back. His kiss brushes dried salt crystals off my forehead. He says nothing. His blue eyes dart within their thick-lashed frame, returning to my gaze and avoiding it in turns. I want more from him, but I know he can't give it. He's still in a brace for his torn ACL—an injury that cut his soccer season short early. He was a captain too. We both grieve. There aren’t words for either of us. Our relationship will end that winter.

I can’t remember the locker room. Next thing I recall I’m in the bathroom of my townhouse alone, stripping off tape and blister guards and spandex. Then I’m in the shower. And I have music blasting. And I’m letting myself feel it. The end of things. 

Over, all over. A whole part of my life shorn. I’d been fired from a job I’ll never be able to get back. Everything I’d spent years working for, finished. The entire portion of my self, a self that felt like a warrior, that got to feel wild and strong, a sense of community, of sisterhood, of purpose, it’s over, gone, forever.  

There’s a shockingly high rate of suicides and depression among Olympic athletes. Even Michael Phelps has spoken out about his struggles with despair. Because, who are you if what has defined so much of your life, your eating, your habits, your schedule, your pain, is over? Who are you when you lose the feral, playful joy that made you feel strong and beautiful and free? 

My dad calls later. He watched the game online. The main shot was a direct bullet at the lower left corner. It was wide open, he says. Almost guaranteed to go in, but I deflected it upper center. I gave the goalie a chance. It just happened too fast. We couldn’t have anticipated it. So it’s not my fault, he tells me. But I only hear the end: My fault. My fault. 

It’s just a game. It’s just a game. I tell myself that for weeks. For years. It’s just a game. But of course, as you know, it wasn’t. It was something more.

CLAIRE KORTYNA’s work has been published in The Maine Review, The Baltimore Review, The Jellyfish Review, The Offbeat, and others. Her  essay Lunar Musings won Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment’s Home Voices Contest. Claire is a nonfiction PhD candidate at the University of Cincinnati and an Iowa State University MFA graduate. Claire reads for The Cincinnati Review and The Sewanee Writers’ Conference.