A Plea for Help

My name is Kelsey Goode and football changed my life. Not even two years ago, I cried myself to sleep almost every night. I was morbidly obese and I knew that if I did not change my life, I would die from failing to take care of myself. I cannot even say I liked much of who I was. I was hiding. And then football happened.

It may surprise you to know there are entire leagues of women's full contact football teams and I was lucky enough to make it onto the Arkansas Wildcats Team. It changed my life. It taught me to have confidence in myself and my body. It taught me to get up every time I fell down. It taught me to be vulnerable to people and it taught me to believe that I had it within me to not only be a fantastic football player, but also a fantastic person. Even now I get emotional on the drive home after practice because for the first time in my life, I am proud of who I am becoming on a daily basis.

But this adventure Im on has hit a snag. I did not get to practice today. I did not get to pour blood sweat and tears into who I want to become because I was the only one that showed up to practice. Its discouraging to not only me, but to the coaches and the owners as well.

So to this, I have a request. A plea from the deepest part of who I am. I need at least 11 women. I do not care about your size, shape, ability, age, orientation or skill level. I need at least 11 women to show up to practices, give of their time to create a team worth talking about, worth being proud of and worth the joy we would inevitably share with each other.

This is what you will need if you are willing to join the ranks to help me continue my adventure. You will need to be willing. You will need to be the type of person that asks yourself if you have what it takes and then to prove you do. You will need to be able to let the coaches teach you what you need to know and you will need to believe that you can be a football player. You will need to have heart, courage and commitment.

This plea is completely selfish really. I have never been one to ask for help and yet here I am begging you to consider the possibility that you could be a player in this life changing game I am playing. If you do not have what it takes (or you're a dude), I am begging you to share this blog until every woman in Arkansas has heard my plea. Two years ago, I would have given up when things got hard, but I am a football player now and I refuse to give up.

We practice on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. If you are interested, please send a message to either me or the Arkansas Wildcats for more information. Thank you for your time.

Eating Chickens

There’s something the skinny people don’t tell you when it comes to changing your life.  Lets be clear here, when I say ‘skinny people’ I mean the people that work at it. Those that exercise, eat right and generally take care of themselves. Usually, all they say is ‘it gets easier’ when you tell them you are sore or tired of eating salad. Like those three little words even begin to explain what one needs to know.I learned this lesson last year and I'm having to relearn it on a greater scale this year. “It gets easier” should really be this: I know your body feels like its on fire all day every day and every move you make causes something in you to scream in anguish  but eventually, like all the survivors of the world, your body gets tired of screaming and gets used to the new life.

Or maybe this: I know you think eating an entire chicken would be your best option, but its not. You're starving, but just make it another day and another and another until your body realizes you aren't starving and those salads aren't so bad. Don’t give up, you have to keep going or else you get all of the misery and never any of the victory.

I keep waiting. I keep pushing my body until I think it cant continue and then I push it a little more, waiting for that moment when it stops screaming and it hasn't  Two weeks now and it still hurts, but this time I know what it feels like to get to the other side. I know how it feels to walk down the street without being tired. I know how it feels to run and not be winded. I know the other side and it just makes me push harder to get there.

Getting the Poison Out

When I was in college, wide eyed and hopeful, I believed so strongly that I would change the world. It was an energy inside me ebbing and flowing with my triumphs and failures. Somewhere in that childhood, I got infected with what we will lovingly call 'the poison'. It hid from the world, deep in my mind, but it was never released. Every harsh word, every misjudgment of my character, every bit of broken trust and a few abusive relationships later and I had more then a lethal dose of poison in me. It made me hate myself, made me self mutilate and worst of all, it made me complacent and content to hide in imaginary worlds where things only went bad if I chose them to. I had done so well in hiding my poison from most people and found myself surrounded by people that did not know me well enough to see it taking control. Years I spent in a cocoon of poison, healing from pains, being distracted by pain and becoming an expert at excuses. I just told myself I was waiting for my life to start. That was, until football showed up.

Last year, my goal was to get up. Every fall, every missed tackle, every ache and every pain all I wanted to do was get back up. It was a victory, a big one. My coach held my hand through the entire thing. He made contact with me every day. He coddled me, encouraged me and picked me back up even when I was the one that knocked myself down. God bless him, I would not have survived without him. I knew this was my first step and that I wasn't strong enough to take it alone. In the few months since the season has ended, I let the poison wrap around me again. I let it pull me under.

And then my friend D showed up to visit me. The first friend to visit me in Arkansas since I moved here. I got to show her my world and in seeing it, she also saw my poison. She was baffled at my self doubt, my complacency and my loss. I had stopped believing that I had something to give the world. She didn't know who I was, that much was clear in her eyes. I hadn't even thought of those dreams I had in college since then. I had buried them deep inside to save them from the poison.

All this was going through my head tonight at practice. This new coach is killer. His consistency to change what he asks of us makes me exhausted in new ways every time and to be honest I didn't want to be there, but I knew that I wouldn't be faithful to my love of football if I didn't go and give what I had. And then it hit me. Almost as if I could see the poison falling off me as I ran. My head is held higher, my smile is genuine and I'm meeting peoples gazes. Last season was about getting up after I fell. This season will be about getting the poison out of me and every teammate I have. I have something to give the world and I am going to show everyone that. Its going to be difficult and painful. There will be times I don't want to keep working and yet I refuse, I refuse, I REFUSE to quit.

Go ahead, pull up a chair. Watch me.

One more.

I am a player for the Arkansas Wildcats Professional Womens Football Team. My thoughts and opinions are my own and in no way reflect the opinion or actions of the Arkansas Wildcats.

 

There is a challenge in showing up to a football practice when you know you are going to be pushed emotionally, physicially and mentally. There is this self preservation that tells you to stay in the car and drive away. I find myself struggling with this internal war every Saturday and Tuesday. Literally every single one. Most times I win, sometimes I dont. Thankfully, I have a fantastic support system of people that cheer me on, but the battle is still there.

This last month, I decided that in order to be the kind of football player I want to be, I need to loose a lot of weight. I want to be a powerhouse because of hard work, not because I happen to be wide and build like a fridge. I want to live like the athlete that football makes me feel like I am.

So I started a diet. It was not a wise decision.  My hope was that this eating program would supply most of my meals and in doing so, they would take away a majority of the opportunities I had to make poor decisions. But it seems my mind is not prepared for the lack of comfort foods. Something is imbalanced. Something is skewed in my thought process and its been a humbling experience.

I am very loved, I know that more then I ever think I have. When I finally got brave enough to say something, there was such a flood of support and love that I couldnt possibly express how thankful I am for it.

After such an ordeal and so many people that dont know me handling me delicately, I find myself just desperate to get back to the 'cats. I was terrified yesterday thinking they were going to admit me and I wouldnt be able to make it to practice or events. I hated that idea. I found that when I think of hope, I think of these women that have become the ones that push me. Some of them voice my biggest fears in my head. All of them are the ones that make me stand back up after Ive fallen down.

They dont know this. They dont even know what Ive been dealing with. It doesnt matter. I dont care if they know or not. I just know that when I think of them, I think of trying one more play, running one more line drill, making it one more day. One more. Thats what my Wildcats are to me, the courage to go one more.

The Beginning

I am a player for the Arkansas Wildcats Professional Womens Football Team. My thoughts and opinions are my own and in no way reflect the opinion or actions of the Arkansas Wildcats.

9 months ago was the beginning of a journey. It was a hot hot hot Arkansas Saturday in the middle of July. First, let me back up a bit and start at the true beginning. I had dabbled in football during college and I found that practices were some of my favorite times ever, but the fear of not being good enough or failing my team when they needed me most kept me full of reasons why not to go. I told everyone I quit simply because I had missed too much practice when I went to rebuild after Katrina. The nobility of the 'sacrifice' kept anyone from actually asking. Since then, for years now, I've regretted giving up since then.

Flash forward years later and there was a new football team in Arkansas. I couldn't wait to try out. That was, until the tryout day showed itself and I found myself piled under all those old fears again. I'm bigger now, way bigger. I am out of shape in every way possible. So I didn't go last year. I solidified my own assessment of myself as someone that would run and hide when it came down to it.

And thus began my slow death. At least that's how I saw it. Let me first preface this with saying that I am dramatic. In my own mind, I was past my prime (already 26!), I was massively over weight, depressed on a constant basis and accepting of the idea that I would die young and fat.

Something had to change or I would die. So I started trying. I got a roommate that was reminding me there was a world outside of my own imagination and he constantly encouraged me to venture into that world. It was helping. I was starting to open myself up to people again. A coworker knew I had played football before and he sent me a forum post from my company.

That post was from a woman we will call Flash. It stated that there was a tryout for the Arkansas Wildcats on Saturday at noon. To my own shock and amazement, I went. That practice was the most brutal experience of my life. It was hot, not a cloud in the sky. We started with stretches and I was awful at them. When we got to the jumping jacks, I couldn't even do 10. I was out of breath and in pain before warm ups, but I wouldn't give up. If I had gotten myself out there, I was past the point of chickening out.

When the chills started, this fantastic woman named Hammer made me go sit in her SUV. I started calling it the N00b incubator. All of us took a turn in there. I spent most of practice in it, willing away the impending heat stroke. Half of me wanted to keep going and the other half of me wanted to slink into my car and disappear, once again to fail miserably. I told that to Ki who was laying the back groaning.

"Do you think they will let us be on the team since we are in here?" I asked, daring to give words to my fears.
"At this point, I don't really care." She responded.

"I feel like crawling to my car and driving home. I feel like giving up." I managed to say it without even a catch in my voice. She then said the words that changed me.
"I think all of us feel like that. Its a natural feeling."

In 12 words, she pulled me out of the mind trap that said I was alone and I always would be and she opened my eyes to the idea that I wasn't all that different after all. So I stayed and once the chills stopped, I went back to practice. I gave it everything I had, taking some time to go rest up in that blissfully cool SUV.

A week later, I got a phone call from a man asking if I wanted to be a Wildcat. I did want to be a Wildcat. I wanted friends. I wanted to be able to move with the ease the other girls did. I wanted to do 50 million push ups like QB did. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to belong and for once, I had the courage to speak up and say so.