Once upon a time there was a girl undecided between two sports. At just 17, Jackie was building a career as a soccer player and as a judoka – a practitioner of judo, a Japanese martial art.
Jackie joined her first professional soccer team as a teenager, continuing to compete in national judo tournaments when she could. After one of these tournaments, however, Jackie had to tell his football coaches that he could not play due to a hip fracture sustained in a judo match. He understood that it was time to make a choice.
He weighed the options. Football was exciting: the lights, the speed, the sense of team! Still, she felt drawn to the iron discipline of judo. During her matches on the mat, there was only her and her opponents, with no distractions.
“Inside me, I knew I would choose football.”
