Sacramento woman helps kick addiction through soccer
Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, and now sixteen cities across the United States have programs affiliated with the nonprofit Street Soccer USA to help players learn life skills. But only a handful of Street Soccer cities have women-only teams. Street Soccer Sacramento is one of them.
As reported by the Sacramento Bee, Lisa Wrightsman, a former Sacramento State soccer player, said she founded the Lady Salamanders in 2010 after her experience playing with the Sacramento Mohawks, a soccer team composed of homeless men.
Her life, she said, had spun out of control because of a drug addiction and she ended up in a 12-step program and transitional housing.
“Probably one of the reasons I didn’t want to get sober for so long was that if I did all that work and there was no happiness on the other side of it, what’s the point?” Wrightsman said. “But I had fun playing street soccer in the most unexpected ways. The guys weren’t good. It didn’t resemble anything formal that I was used to. It was just a patch of grass. It was the first time since being sober that I had fun just running around, so that was significant. It reminded me that I had loved something before I had loved drugs and alcohol.”
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To read more about how one woman overcame her own addiction, and is now helping other women kick addiction through soccer, please visit the Sacramento Bee.