When playing a sport for most of your life, it can start to control who you are as a person. For many, one bad season can make you realize there is more to life than just being an athlete. It took Gabriella Howley, a soccer player on the Pennridge Women’s Soccer Team, a ruptured ACL, and a torn meniscus to realize that there was more to life than just soccer. She has been playing soccer for the past twelve years, and for the majority of those twelve years, she has had the same coach, Audrey Anderson. Howley made the varsity soccer team as a freshman, making her one out of the three freshmen to make the competitive varsity squad. She held her own and scored multiple goals for the team as they defeated others, and ultimately won the State Championship. While talking about the road to states last fall Anderson shared “For a freshman to score the first goal in a district semifinal was something special and something I feel like she’ll take with her these next three years.” In this particular game Howley not only scored the first goal for the Rams, but she scored the final goal for the Rams as well. Which is a huge accomplishment for a freshman on a team that was full of talented seniors and juniors. Off the pitch, Howley is a role model to many young soccer players, and often spends time training and growing her relationships with the “little rams”. The “little Rams” are young soccer players who look up to and are occasionally trained by the lady Rams soccer team. The sport has not only trained Howley physically, but it has also trained her mentally.
One of the largest challenges physically, and mentally an athlete can go through is being seriously injured at the start of their career. Unfortunately, this happened to Howley. Shortly after winning states with the high school team, she started her club soccer season with Hex FC ECNL. Playing on the ECNL team means rigorous training and games in all types of conditions, after coming off of a long high school season and jumping right into the tough club season Howleys ACL was ruptured, and her meniscus was torn. This caused her to have to sit on the sidelines and watch her teammates play without her for 9 months. Going from a star on the team to sitting on the bench was a very hard adjustment for Howley. She stated that she “had to learn how to adjust and adapt to this big change.” For a player who was continuously training, and putting the sport before herself just for the betterment of the program, sitting on the sidelines was tough mentally. Howley shared “I had a lot of frustration, sadness, and anxiety post-surgery that I had to learn to navigate” and how she “lost her biggest identity.” This caused her to take a step back and look at the sport as a whole, not just as who she was as a person.
When taking a step back Howley was able to recognize the large community she has built through soccer over the years, and she developed a new type of appreciation for them. She was able to see all of the lessons and opportunities that soccer has given her, and as she describes it “made a promise to never take soccer for granted ever again.” Through playing soccer Howley learned how to be a hard worker, which was not only shown on the field, but it was shown off the field as well. The Pennridge Women’s Soccer coach, Audrey Anderson, shared “Gabriella Howley is one of the hardest working players that we have on the team.” She is not afraid to assert herself in the game and make herself a key player, even when she is the youngest on the field. After Howley’s injury she was able to take this hard work and redirect it to other parts of her life. She continued to train in any way she could, starting with small physical therapy exercises and moving to multiple workouts a day as her knee got stronger. She also continued to share her love for the sport with others by continuing to help train younger athletes, along with working at the Deep Run Sports Camp. Here she was able to show kids of all ages what was possible when you have the determination to be one of the best. She was always seen uplifting others, and providing them with the assistance to become their best selves. Her goal for these young aspiring athletes was for them to experience the same joy that soccer gave to her.
As a younger sister, learning from others is nothing new to Howley. While growing up she was always learning from her older brother Will. But what Will didn’t teach Howley, soccer has. She has learned how to stick up for herself, be a good teammate, and build relationships with people older than her, whether it is an older teammate or her coaches. Lauren Murphy, a former teammate of Howley’s, stated “Gabriella has never been afraid to ask how to better her game in order to help the team, while also not being afraid to tell you what you can do to work better as a unit, which ultimately helped the team work together and be more successful.” When making her return to the sport this past fall Howley picked up right where she left off. But this time with a newfound appreciation for the people she is playing with. She plans to continue playing soccer throughout high school and hopefully play at a division one four-year college. Although having an injury caused Howley to take a step back and form a new identity separate from soccer, soccer will always be a large part of who she is, and how she learns.
