Her gaze should really be on the ball, but it lingers on the woman she has never quite forgotten.
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The short story
I’m a wall, I tell myself, a wall and a goldfish. I stand in the goal circle and wait for the game in front of me to come back together. A wall, because nothing is allowed to get past me. And a goldfish, because I have to forget what happened a second ago in order to be fully focused again the next moment.
The thunderstorm gave us an hour-long break. Enough time to forget, while the rain settled over the field. Now the sky is bright enough again, the grass dark and heavy with water, and I stand in my circle, trying to become the wall once more.
Then I see her running toward me from the other side of the field. The goldfish inside me, which had just begun to obediently forget, remembers everything. Mia. We played in the same jersey for three years. I know her movements better than my own, better than those of all my teammates. In practice, I’ve seen a thousand shots come off her stick; I’ve learned how her right knee bends slightly before she aims for the near corner. That was before she moved, before she switched jerseys and teams and left me behind.
Now she’s standing there, in the opposing team’s yellow, with the same stick, the same knee that’s about to buckle. I’m standing in the goal with all this knowledge about her body, which should be an advantage. It should give me confidence, make me stronger as a wall, but it turns into something else. There’s no clear line between knowing how she shoots and remembering how her touch felt on my skin.
I know where my gaze should be. On the spot where her right hand wraps around her stick. Where she’s about to twist her wrist to shoot the ball past me into the goal. In a fraction of a second, that’s where the game’s next move is decided. I have to focus on that spot. My coach has a term for this — “quiet eye”, that stillness of the gaze just before the movement, completely free of distraction.
But my gaze doesn’t stay where it’s supposed to. It wanders to the strand of hair that has come loose from Mia’s ponytail. It lingers on her expression, a mix of determination and focus, which triggers a feeling inside me that I can hardly put into words. I realize I want to be two things at once — the rock my team can count on, and the woman in whom Mia sees something that has nothing to do with lacrosse.
She shifts her weight almost imperceptibly, but I recognize that shift from countless training sessions. Back when we were on the same team, we used to laugh whenever she scored. Now, I’m in no mood to laugh. Mia’s hand rises, she pulls her stick back, her wrist snapping forward. For a split second, I don’t see my opponent, I see only the Mia I knew before things turned out this way.
Wall, I think to myself, as a reminder, and force my gaze back to the little yellow ball that’s finally leaving her stick. The shot comes low and to the left, exactly where her knee had already hinted it would go. The corner that’s the hardest for me to defend. But my body reacts and translates the information my eyes were able to relay just in time into a movement. The net of my stick closes around the ball before it reaches the goal line.
I pick up the ball, which I’m supposed to pass quickly to a teammate. I stand frozen in the goal circle. Mia doesn’t run back right away either. She shakes her head briefly, as if she can’t believe I made the save. Then she smiles cautiously, making sure her team doesn’t see it. That smile, which I know at least as well as her wrist and her knee.
Our eyes meet. For a moment, we look deep into each other’s eyes just like we used to. I’m on the verge of losing myself in her brown eyes, and I wish this moment would last forever. But I have to become a wall again, a goldfish, to win this game. And yet my gaze lingers on her for one heartbeat longer than a wall is allowed to.
This story was originally written in German without the help of AI. It was translated to English by Helena Hartmann using DeepL.
The study
Franks, B., Roberts, W. M., Jakeman, J., Swain, J., & Davids, K. (2022). A descriptive case study of skilled football goalkeepers during 1 v 1 dyads: a case for adaptive variability in the quiet eye. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 908123. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.908123
Connection between story and study
When athletes calmly focus their gaze on a specific point just before making a decisive move, this is called the “Quiet Eye”. The study wanted to find out how this works for soccer goalkeepers in real 1-on-1 duels. Four professional goalkeepers wore eye-tracking goggles while real shooters ran toward them and took shots, and the researchers analyzed where and for how long the goalkeepers looked just before the shot. For saved goals, the “quiet eye” began later and lasted longer than for scored goals, though there were significant individual differences among the goalkeepers. The authors conclude that there is no single “perfect” gaze strategy, but rather that successful goalkeepers react flexibly and individually to the situation.
The story uses the “quiet eye” as a metaphor for the moment when the gaze should actually be focused, but instead of looking at the ball, the goalkeeper’s gaze wanders to her former teammate, with whom she shares a romantic past.
The author
Lena studied linguistics and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen with a dissertation on the influence of interest on early childhood word-learning processes. Since 2020, she has been working in science communication and science management, with stops in Nijmegen, Göttingen, and Hanover. In her free time, she plays lacrosse as a goalkeeper (just like the protagonist of her story) and enjoys trying out new recipes and complex board games.
