The past year has been a journey for Lynn Williams. Last summer, as Black Lives Matter protests swept the country following the murder of George Floyd, she was part of a group of Black players in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) who established the Black Women’s Player Collective. The COVID-19 pandemic — which had kept her from seeing her boyfriend for more than a year — was ongoing and the Olympics were looming.
A few months before Tokyo 2020, she could feel the early kicks of self-sabotage hitting in. She’d worked her way back into the United States women’s national team after narrowly missing out on the 2019 World Cup squad, but she could feel the self-doubt setting in ahead of another big roster announcement.
“I recognised a pattern in myself where I was self-sabotaging,” she told ESPN in early September. “Where things were going so well for me and I would second guess myself so much and ask, ‘Why am I getting these opportunities? Why? Why? Why?’ Instead of just saying, ‘I deserve this.'”
– USWNT roster for Carli Lloyd’s final games
A self-confessed “underdog,” Williams started working with a sports psychologist and together, they talked through and imagined every possible scenario: Making the Olympic roster, not making it, what it would feel like to have a gold medal around her neck, what it would feel like to be watching the drama unfold from home. When USWNT head coach Vlatko Andonovski announced Williams as an alternate — one of the four players who would travel to Tokyo in the event one of the 18 rostered players got injured or couldn’t play — she was disappointed, but analysed how this changed her role. She focused on what she could do to help her teammates.
“I thought my role was to go in and be a supporting role. Somebody who was going to…
Source : espn
