More Than an Athlete: Losing the Only Identity I'd Ever Known

For anyone who's had a passion since childhood—whether it's athletics, art, or arithmetic—it's easy to build an entire identity around it. What no one tells you is that an identity can dissolve even faster than it forms. I learned that the hard way as a volleyball player at Loyola University Chicago.

The Athlete I Used to Be

Before the setbacks piled up, volleyball was my whole world, and I was good at it. I was a top prospect in the nation, held multiple full-scholarship offers by the age of fourteen, and was named a first-team All-American toward the end of my high school career.

In my freshman year of high school, I committed to play Division I at the University of Maryland. But once I got there, I found myself in an environment where athletes were pushed to put the sport ahead of everything else—including academics. Education mattered too much to me to let that slide, so I made the difficult decision to transfer and continue my career at Loyola University Chicago.

I didn't know it yet, but Loyola was where my identity as an athlete would come to an end.

The Snap

I arrived in January of 2018, and the excitement of competing for a new school felt surreal. The transition was smooth—right up until our first spring competition, when I started feeling a persistent pain in my right foot.

For months, the discomfort came and went. Every time I raised it, the doctors dismissed it. That continued until preseason.

It was an ordinary practice. My coaches called us over for conditioning, and I stepped up first to run. A few minutes in, I turned to head back to the line when a snap rang through the gym and I collapsed to the floor. What I didn't know yet was that I had just broken my foot in half: a clean snap of both the first and second metatarsals in my right foot, along with a multitude of torn ligaments. The pain was like nothing I'd ever felt. I had no idea it was about to get worse.

Dismissed

As I was helped to a nearby table to be looked at, my frustration boiled over. I was still writhing on the floor when I heard my coach call out, "Lexi, come back here and finish the drill!" So with every bit of strength I had left, I limped back to the line and finished my conditioning.

Here's the part that still stuns me: I had just snapped my foot in half, and I was called dramatic. For the rest of practice—and for the next three months—my coaches, trainers, teammates, and doctors brushed off my pain and told me I was fine. I wasn't believed until I finally got approved for an MRI to find the source of the pain I'd been describing all along.

When the images were finally read, the damage was far worse than anyone had been willing to consider: a Lisfranc injury—both bones cleanly broken, ligaments torn. Over my time at Loyola, it would take three major surgeries to put my foot back together. Between the negligence, the misdiagnoses, and three months of being ignored, my athletic career was over.

Learning to Advocate for Myself

Losing volleyball meant losing the version of myself I'd known my entire life. For a while, I genuinely didn't know who I was anymore.

But the experience taught me something I'll carry forever: to trust myself when others won't. For months I'd been told my pain wasn't real, and I'd been proven right in the worst possible way. So I stopped waiting for permission. I sought out other physicians, got real answers, and ultimately decided to hold the people responsible accountable for what had happened to me. It was the first time I truly fought for myself—and it changed how I move through the world.

What It Left Me With

I don't look back on any of this as purely negative. I see it as the experience that taught me who I am when the thing I'd built my life around is stripped away.

An identity isn't fixed. Losing one doesn't leave you empty—it clears space for the next one to grow. Years of medical hardship and the abrupt end of my athletic career pushed me somewhere I never planned to go, but everything sport gave me, and everything the adversity that followed demanded of me, only made me stronger, steadier, and more sure of myself than I've ever been.