A Light at the End of the Tunnel

Although Bella Stevens faced many challenges, she is grateful to be able to continue pursing her soccer career.

BY AILISH KILBRIDE

A four month concussion — an athlete’s worst nightmare. For CHS senior, Bella Stevens, this became her reality, taking her out of soccer for nearly a quarter of her season.

“I was two years old when I first started playing with a soccer ball,” Stevens said. “I was so young I don’t even remember my first couple of teams.”

Stevens started her club soccer journey at the Michigan Tigers Soccer club She spent her 3 middle school years at the Tigers and then switched to the Hawks Soccer Club during her freshman year of high school.

“I liked that [the Hawks] was an all girls club,” Stevens said. “Their entire focus was the girls and it wasn’t divided between men and women. [The club] is very passionate about developing women’s soccer. So they paid more attention to us and they had a lot more resources and a lot more opportunities.”

Switching to the Hawks allowed Stevens to begin her college search. Following her freshman year, Stevens would be forced to take a 4 month break after enduring a serious concussion.

“Vestibular and autonomic dysfunction and all of the other symptoms combined, [the stress] was just like a lot and it built up,” Stevens said. “[Everything got] to the point that I didn’t really like anything. I didn’t like coming to school. I didn’t like life in general. I was just not happy with anything. But soccer was really hard because every time something else has gone wrong soccer has been there my entire life. So when it wasn’t something I could fall back on when school wasn’t good, it became really hard.”

During her recovery, Stevens began to fall out of love with soccer. Her coach wanted her to come back sooner than she was ready to. Stevens felt that she owed it to her team to play in the regional game, to make sure they would advance to Nationals. With her symptoms still looming, she wasn’t ready to get back onto the field.

“I think soccer really took the brute end of [the rough patch],” Stevens said. “But I didn’t put myself first which was really upsetting in the end that I had done all that to myself for like for what?”

While Stevens was in recovery she started dating her girlfriend, who pushed Stevens to get herself back on track.

“She manifested and did all these affirmations,” Stevens said. “She always did her homework and everything else on time. And seeing that pushed me to do that too. I wanted to be better for me and for her.”

After falling back in love with soccer, Stevens was presented with an opportunity at Vassar College, which is where she will be playing soccer in the fall of 2023.