By: Manya Makoski

I had a great realization the other day.  It’s not like it hasn’t always been in the back of my mind, but it became that much clearer to me.  I am ready to be a professional soccer player.  Professional. Soccer. Player.  If I were to market myself, tell my story to a stranger, I would want it to start and end with those three words.

One reason crawls into my head.  Another takes the back door into my subconscious.  A third smacks me in the face.  They kept on coming until the other day when I couldn’t take it anymore, and the fire that’s been brewing inside me, just exploded.  No, I didn’t have one of those Jerry Maguire-style freak-out sessions.  Mentally, I just knew.  Poof. It appeared. Professional. Soccer. Player.

I want to prove it to those college jock-strap-wearing-meat-headed football players that women’s professional soccer can make it and stay in this country.  We deserve to have the best league in the world, not just because of corporate sponsorship dollars, but because we can market ourselves to our fans. We can be sustainable.

I want to be more than just a role model for every young player I coach.  I want them to ask me to teach them my favorite move, not because I can do an inside-outside really well, but because I am one of the best soccer players in the country.  Because I am a WPS player.

I want this upcoming W-league season to be worth moving away from my family, boyfriend, and friends and living across the country for the summer to play for one of the best coaches I have played for, Charlie Naimo.  I want my 100% commitment to the Pali Blues to result in something great.

I want to reassure myself that every bruise on my legs from getting kicked by fellow co-ed leaguers is worth every fight on the field.  I want to know there are bigger battles worth playing for.  Worth dreaming for.

I want my Trumbull High School Class of 2002 Yearbook Senior Superlative to really be true: “Most likely to be a pro sports player”.  (But who remembers who got voted what anyway...?)

I want to be more involved in WPS than just writing sports marketing papers about why the WUSA failed and why WPS will be successful and sustainable.  I have researched, probed, hypothesized, and followed the news releases.

Maybe this is what made my fuel so combustible that day I exploded with realization.  I am done being a bystander.  I am done with criticism from others.  I am ready to be.

Professional. Soccer. Player.