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Roaring cheers filled Van Nuys High School’s football field during the last home junior varsity football game of the 2022 season as Nataly Martinez tackled her male opponent. Stepping off the field elated, she was greeted with supporting messages from her teammates.
After the season ended, Athletic Director Dion Coley announced to the school that a girls flag football team would start the following year.
Martinez immediately seized the opportunity and retired from the football team.
Athletes retire from sports for various reasons, whether switching to another sport or stepping away altogether.
Some, like current senior Nataly Martinez, may gain love for another sport and switch to that one. Others, like freshman Camila Guzman-Alvarez find it too physically taxing or like junior Silvia Salazar, retire to relieve stress.
Martinez started playing football in her sophomore year of high school.
“I wanted to show to other girls that playing football is not only for men or a manly sport,” Martinez said.
She played an entire season with the team, and when flag football was having tryouts, she strongly encouraged girls to join.
Leaving football was a hard decision for her, but she knew that she wanted to join her new team with a new goal in mind.
“For me, joining football was a step forward to motivate other girls,” Martinez said. “But I definitely left football with a big heart.”
Camila Guzman-Alvarez decided to retire from the cheerleading team due to her health.
Guzman-Alvarez started her cheerleading career in middle school and after culmination, knew that it was something she would want to pursue in high school.
“I loved cheer because it was so nice to be around other girls,” she said. “Everyone on the team was very understanding.”
Once the school year began, things progressed positively for Guzman-Alvarez, until she began to experience constant nausea and vomiting, as well as knee problems during practice.
Initially, she thought that it was just the heavy demands of cheer, so she tried out for soccer and faced the same problems.
“I just felt really bad in general during cheer practice,” Guzman-Alvarez said. “I felt like fainting and throwing up. Not even an hour into soccer tryouts, I threw up twice.”
She is still unaware of why her body was refusing to let her practice, but she knew that continuing to practice would cause her more pain, so she ultimately made the decision to retire.
Salazar retired from the volleyball team due to an overload of stress.
After playing volleyball in middle school and deciding to try out for our high school team the summer before her freshman year, Salazar played her first two years of high school on the team.
Salazar looked at sports as a way to calm her anxiety.
“My friends and I really enjoyed playing, and since I’ve played sports for a long time, it was always a way for me to relieve stress,” Salazar said.
However, everything changed when junior year began, a notoriously challenging year crucial for college applications.
She was always able to use volleyball to relieve stress but with Advanced Placement classes and volleyball, the stress began to overwhelm her, leading to physical issues.
“It’s junior year, so I started taking a lot of harder courses,” she said. “Due to this, I started to have a stomach problem, a stress induced gastro.”
Retiring wasn’t an easy fit but she knew that if she didn’t retire, it would cost her mental health.
“Instead of it being a place for me to relieve my stress, volleyball started to cause me stress, so I needed to get out,” Salazar said.
Regardless of the struggles that led up to all of these athletes’ retirements, all three have found joy in what came after.
Martinez found joy in spending time with her female teammates on the flag football team.
“I have found flag football to be the most fun thing I have ever done in my life,” Martinez said. “When I see other girls playing football, I get so happy because I see the same dedication that I had with tackle football.”
Guzman-Alvarez finds joy in being able to support her old teammates.
“I love the cheer team,” she says. “Even if I’m not there anymore, I will always find myself supporting them.”
Salazar finds joy in having less stress then she used to have with both volleyball and advanced classes on her plate.
“Obviously with school I’m still stressed, but I felt like it would have been doubled if I had a sport on top,” she said.
Retiring from a sport can be frightening, but if athletes believe it is the best decision, the outcome can be positive.
Just like how Martinez, Salazar and Guzman-Alvarez found happiness after retirement, other athletes can also find comfort in leaving.
