Dear Mom and Dad, Thank you for helping me reach my goals, because of you and your sacrifices I can say I am a college athlete. I love looking back on the memories and pictures and seeing the love and support you both have provided me for the last 13 years while I have played youth soccer. Thank you for finding me the best teams and leagues for me, traveling around the country every weekend to watch me play, and sacrificing much of your free time and time with your other kids just so I could do what I love every day and strive for my goals. Your support means so much to me and I will never forget it. Thank you for allowing me to be on the best club teams even if that meant we couldn’t afford a family vacation that year or we didn’t get to do fun family things, our whole family made so many sacrifices for me to play club soccer. You guys never told me my dreams were too big, instead you helped me find a way to reach them. Mom, thank you for getting kicked out of games even if it was Dad who was yelling at the ref. Thank you for driving me 6 hours just to play one game and filling me with support when I didn’t play to the best of my abilities and was upset with the game. Thank you for juggling going back to school, being a nurse, having another kid, and taking me to soccer every day. Some of my favorite soccer memories have you in them, but my favorite soccer memory with you was when we went to the US women's national team game in Columbus just because I wanted to meet Alex Morgan. You made sure I got there and even waited in the big crowd after the game just to get me an autograph from my favorite player. Thank you for always posting my achievements on your Facebook page even if I thought they were embarrassing now I realize you were just capturing my soccer career and I love looking back on all those years. Dad, Thank you for being the athletic parent who understood the struggles I face every day while on the field. Thank you for learning soccer so you could help me train on my own to get better. I love opening my phone to see what new supportive Facebook videos you send me and your “ good luck play good” text exactly an hour before the game starts if you can’t be there in person to tell me. Thank you for always buying me the cleats I wanted even if they were expensive because “ look good, feel good, play good” right? Thank you both for supporting me through the tough times of club and high school soccer, me quitting soccer just to come back a few weeks later, through injuries and bad coaches, and being my biggest fans. Thank you for always having my back. Thank you for having faith in me that I could stand up to the bad coaches and show them that I was better and needed on the field more than they thought. I know I might not say it but your guy's support has truly made me into the athlete I am today and without you guys, I don’t think I would’ve achieved my goals. Love, Hannah

In early August of 2021, I was practicing with my soccer team when I started to feel some discomfort around my hip. I didn't tell anyone and kept playing games and practicing on it for months. By late August I caught COVID-19 and sat out of soccer for 3 months because I passed out and the doctors couldn't figure out what from COVID-19 made me pass out. I thought the hip pain would go away but I was wrong. During a soccer game in early May of 2022, I went to celebrate scoring a goal with my teammates when my hip felt cramped up and I couldn't walk, my range of motion felt very limited. It felt like my hip bone was getting caught on something. Around this point in the year was the state soccer tournament and tryouts so I had to keep playing but as the weeks went on my hip got worse. I finally went to the orthopedic doctor a week before the end of the season to get my hip checked out. They told me my iliac crest was inflamed and that with rest it would stop hurting. This was also around the time that I learned how important athletic trainers are for athletes and I took a class on sports medicine and enjoyed it and could see myself doing this as a career because I knew that I wanted to do something in the medical field while working with sports. I started taking college visits for soccer and I learned that to become an athletic trainer you had to get your masters. I also learned that athletic trainers don't get payed very much and they spend most of their time during weeknights and Saturdays at their jobs. This led to me realizing that maybe I should get my bachelor's degree in nursing as my mom did so that I can still help people by working in a hospital or doctor's office to gain experience and working towards getting a job with a professional or college sports team since most of them have registered nurses on their staff. I think working as a nurse can make a huge impact on the lives of patients in hospitals and doctor's offices. I know that whenever I've gone to the hospital or doctors the nurses make me feel more comfortable and I want to be that way for someone else. In sports, the medical staff plays a huge part in keeping the athletes safe and healthy for the whole season. Most athletes go through an injury in their career and I want to help them try to prevent further injury and rehab back from their injuries. I want to make a positive impact on people and athletes and I think becoming a nurse is the way for me to do that.