Perspectives From the Pitch: Introducing Hannah Diaz
The world traveler is grateful for the opportunities soccer's given her
Perspectives From the Pitch is a new section of Touchline Talk featuring pieces written by players themselves discussing what playing the sport at the highest level looks like and providing insight into who they are as people.
If by some strange coincidence you were to stumble upon a Middletown High School yearbook and flipped to find the 2014 graduates, I would be tucked somewhere between Davis and Fenk. Long blonde hair, a naive openmouthed smile and no tattoos…yet. Just beside my photo in permanent ink sits my senior quote, “Sorry, I can’t. I have soccer.”
Hannah Diaz was, at the age of 17, many things. She was an avid reader and a nightlight writer. She painted with oils and collected flowers to dry in her notebooks. She pirated music off LimeWire and ate Dreyer's mint chip ice cream by the gallon. But there was always one thing that took precedent over the rest, one thing where excellence came easy. I was The Footballer. I’m sure many of my colleagues have shared and continue to share the same label. We wear it proudly.
Now I am 26 years old. I graduated both high school and college early. I hold records at Saint Mary’s College of California. I earned a degree in both political science and philosophy. I have played professionally in Japan, France and the United States at the highest level. I have traveled to over 15 different countries. I have one-of-a-kind bonds with friends, mentors and colleagues across the globe. I have been immersed in cultures completely foreign to me. And it’s all due to the infinite opportunities being a footballer provides.
I took my identity and pushed it, until it started to become something else. There is an important reality that can be lost in early morning workouts, midday naps and recovery runs, and that is learning to become more than how you’re identified. I am more than a footballer, more than an athlete, more than a name on the back of a jersey.
Football was once the end-all be-all. It was the motivator, the driver, the proof of all the work I’ve put in when no one was there to pat me on the back. Where it was once an end, it has become the means by which I am able to experience life. There are few professional atmospheres that force you to endure beyond your control, that force you to adapt both physically and mentally.
But there is a sneaky side of being a professional athlete that is often overlooked and taken for granted. And it isn’t the experience or the travel or the education. It is the interactions, both brief or at length, with so many different types of people which constantly form and change your perspective on the world and the vastness of stories within it. I am thrilled to share my perspective, my adventures — both happy and sad — and most importantly, a version of me that as an athlete I haven’t always been able to express.
Hannah Diaz