The Year Everything Changed
Fall 2000, I was coaching a girls’ soccer team. Young players—high school age. Talented, raw, full of promise and full of questions. It was one of those teams you don’t forget. I still remember their faces, their voices, how they moved, how they looked at me for answers I didn’t always have. It was women’s football before it became a career for me. Before the world cracked open.
We were in that rhythm that only a season can bring. Planning lineups. Running drills under sunset skies. Building trust, week by week. I thought we were building something we’d carry forward into spring.
Then came fall 2001.
September.
The world changed, and so did mine.
I had to tell them—I’ve got to go.
They didn’t fully understand what that meant. Honestly, neither did I. But I knew enough to know it wasn’t just a short trip. I was military. And now I was being pulled into something much larger, much darker. I said goodbye, told them to keep going, to finish strong.
But I never saw any of them again.
What followed wasn’t one deployment. It was a stretch of years. A blur of countries, uniforms, orders, flights, fatigue, dust, silence, and waiting. There was death. There was a lot of death. There was destruction—of places, of people, of versions of yourself you never get back. In that year, I changed astronomically. I went from someone who had seen some combat—briefly, and who was fine—to someone hardened by war. I was a coach in 2000. By the end of 2001, I was something else entirely.
And now here I am, retiring at 48. Officially 100% disabled by the VA. That number is cold. It doesn’t speak of erosion. It doesn’t explain the distance between who I was and who I became. It doesn’t tell you how it feels to carry a season of soccer in one part of your memory and years of war in another—and how little those two lives recognize each other.
Sometimes I think about those girls. They probably finished school. Some of them may have gone on to play in college. Some of them might be coaching now. Some might not even remember my name. But I hope they remember that season. I hope it mattered. Because it mattered to me. More than they’ll ever know.
There are clean lines in life. Before. And after.
Fall 2000, I was steady. I was part of something simple and human.
Fall 2001, I walked away from that field into a world that asked something much colder from me—and never gave anything back.
Not everything circles back.
Some goodbyes echo for decades.
But just because it ended doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.