"I lost myself in high school, because of my injury"

 

Azure Davey had to endure many sacrifices during her journey through sports. The biggest sacrifice she feels that she had to forgo was her health. After so many years of participating in sports she feels that her body is her biggest sacrifice, especially her knees. She presumes that it will take a toll later in life. As a result of continuous injuries she was limited in her ability to play sports both her junior and senior year of high school.This caused her to be left out, "Socially ostracized because she had over-identified herself as an athlete," which she now no longer had. So, in the end she realized that she limited her identity to just her participation in sports.

Sacrifices cost allure in opportunites to reach outside of her immediate sports circle to connect with individuals in different realms. Currently, in the role of athletic director she misses the chance to relate to athletes on a more personal basis.



" Sweat plus sacrifice equals success." -Charles O. Finley

Azure recalls the greatest challenge of being a college athlete was the responsibility as the captain of her teams to create an overall cohesion among the team members. Group dynamics and leadership were two of the most important qualities to her as a captain. There was a lot of pressure because she had to be the voice of the coaching staff to her teammates and the voice for her teammates to the coaches. Communication was a very essential piece of making a team work together as a group and Azure was focused on "making sure [the team] was a cohesive group regardless of differences." Azure's life has been full of challenges, through playing sports all her life, injuries, coaching fresh out of college, coaching sports she has never played and her newest endeavor of assistant athletic director at SUNY Cortland. At each stage of her life there became new struggles that emerged because of increasing difficulty and maturity. At the elementary level Azure admits that the biggest struggle was simply carrying her heavy hockey gear home from practice. "It was so heavy!" She doesn't remember any integration problems or anything more serious than just lacing up her skates for practice. Once high school came along the struggles and challenges began with force. After suffering from serious injuries, Azure says that she "lost herself in high school" because her identity as an active athlete was stolen. This was an enormous challenge because she had to learn from the experience and allow it to make her stronger instead of allowing it to steal her motivation and passion for athletics. Challenges in the college years became much more of a balancing act. She had to balance 3 sports, school work and the many extracurricular activities that rounded out her busy schedule at Hamilton College. Balancing life at college is challenging enough without athletics, but Azure managed to add 3 Varsity sports, serve as team captains and gain countless awards and recognitions on top of everything else.

 
In 10th grade, Azure Davey experienced an injury that unfortunately many females have gone through. In a varsity basketball game she was up against a senior who was a solid individual and a great athlete. The two went up for a rebound and Azure went one direction and her opponent went the other. She recalled that people told her they could hear it pop. She had torn her ACL and MCL and would miss out on soccer the next two seasons, the sport that she had identified herself the most with.
Although she had torn those two major ligaments, the doctors did not know what it was and they told her she had sprained her knee. The athlete that Azure was and still is, she felt as though she was complaining a lot for just a sprain and just worked hard through physical therapy. Azure says that she uses the “suck it up philosophy” and this was just something she would have to get through.
After working diligently to get her knee back so she can play again, she went back to soccer finally. Azure was practicing a routine goal kick when her other leg that was planted on the ground, gave out, and she had now two knees to worry about. After her second injury, they finally decided to have Azure do an MRI where they found that she had in fact torn her ACL and MCL in both of her knees. She describes this part of her life as a miserable experience and it was so hard because until that point they had not given her a specific time of recovery, which led to her hopes continually dashed when she realized she just was not capable to return yet.
Soccer was Azure’s primary sport in high school, but having missed her last two years due to her injury left her to feel as if she lost her identity. She took this chance however and turned it into a new experience. Azure felt that she was no longer limited to soccer and she joined the swimming team those two seasons of junior and senior year and was the captain as well. This injury meant that she would not be scouted for college in soccer, but it in no way slowed down her success at that level in sports. .