Oregon author and former professional soccer player writes memoir about her time playing overseas

Oregon author Georgia Cloepfil spent six years playing soccer professionally in six different countries after she graduated from college. It was a lonely, physically demanding life that was also incredibly rewarding. Cloepfil’s new memoir, “The Striker and the Clock,” details that time, and the beauty and complexity of the game she still loves.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Geoff Norcross: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Geoff Norcross. Writing about sports is hard. There are great sports writers, sure, but they’re usually not the ones doing the thing on the field, on the track or in the water. When accomplished athletes write memoirs and reduce their physical pursuits to words on the page, the results can be mixed.

Georgia Cloepfil is the rare combination of athlete and aesthete. She’s an accomplished soccer player who can beautifully capture the game through the written word. Her new book is called “The Striker and the Clock: On Being in the Game.” Georgia Cloepfil is from Portland. She played soccer at Lincoln High before her college and professional career, and she joins us now. Georgia, welcome to Think Out Loud.

Georgia Cloepfil: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Norcross: You quote David Foster Wallace in your book. He had this blistering review of tennis star Tracy Austin’s biography. He wrote, “Those who receive and act out the gift of athletic genius must, perforce, be blind and dumb about it.” So, was that like a challenge for you?

Cloepfil: [Laughter] It definitely was. On some level, I understand what he’s saying. He’s speaking to this mindless euphoria that we all get to enjoy if we’re in the flow state. But I also thought of it as a bit of a privilege to be able to be mindless. And a lot of soccer players I know that I played professionally with had so many other things going on in their lives, especially those that couldn’t make a living to save up for the rest of their lives. We have other jobs, we have other passions, just like many multifaceted people that play sports at a high level, too. So I did want to write against that a little bit.

Norcross: I’m reminded of that great line, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” There’s something about athletic achievement that makes it hard to write about. And I’m wondering if you can just help me understand why. Not that it’s a problem for you, because you’ve clearly cracked the code. But why is it so difficult?

Cloepfil: I wrote about how, especially, it’s hard to write about joy. I think for me, looking back on my career, it was a lot easier to remember the off-the-field stuff. And a lot of that was hard, moving, injuries, pain, struggles, things like that are easier to recall. And I think the joyful moments – those ones that David Foster Wallace is writing about – are like blackouts.

There’s like a physical response that comes into play there, too. Adrenaline can really erase anything that you’re thinking, erase your memory of a particular moment. So I thought it was fun to look back and try to piece together what it actually felt like to score a goal, for example. And I look at a lot of other … I borrow words from Wayne Rooney and other people who have tried to pin down that feeling and put words to it, but that’s the fun challenge of writing.

Norcross: The Wayne Rooney quote that you included really jumped out at me. He said playing a soccer game – or a football game, in his case – is like being “underwater,” and then “when you score a goal, it’s like finally coming up for air.” Does that resonate with you?

Cloepfil: Yeah, there’s definitely this threshold, I think. You’re in it, and then the moment happens and you become conscious right after, where it’s like, “Oh, this is what I’ve just done! But wait, how did I do it? Where was I, what did it even look like? I won’t know until I watch it on video.”

So, yeah, there’s definitely, like, a before and after – the before being that sort of wordless, muted place, which I loved the image of being underwater. Everything is sort of quiet and contained in that way.

Norcross: So many of the sports memoirs that are out there are written for and by people who are in individual sports, like tennis, swimming or cycling. How is writing about a team sport different?

Cloepfil: I thought a lot about that. Part of the reason I wanted to write this book is because there are so few sports books, and especially so few sports books, that are very nuanced about team sports and about games that I love. And I wondered why that was. I think it’s a lot easier to philosophize a game like tennis, for example, where you have literally one person against another. Boxing is another one, swimming. There’s some great writing about that sort of isolation. I think that is why those games are so interesting to read about, and what goes on in your mind when you’re alone.

I definitely think there’s a lot of isolation, even when you’re on a team, especially in the experience off the field. My experience playing overseas, traveling abroad, trying to sort of grind my way up the top, I think that I wanted to expose that and show … I think the dynamics of a team are equally philosophical, but there are also isolated moments that can be really analyzed in a team sport, too.

Norcross: You wrote this great little piece in the book about playing overseas, and about the joys and the confusions of it. I’d like you to read that for me right now. It’s on page 31. You write about what it’s like to arrive in another country to play professional soccer in a whole other place and a whole other culture. Could you read that for me now?

Cloepfil: Sure. It’s minute 14 of 90 in the book.

[Reading excerpt from “The Striker and the Clock”] “Each time I landed, there would be someone waiting for me at the airport. He would be wearing a suit, looking for someone tall, someone blonde. He might have seen a photo of me, or he might have just been guessing. He would be right though. And he would approach me with a tentative smile which I would return. I would notice the crest on his polo or sport coat. ‘Georgia?’ We would shake hands. He would offer to hold my bags, but I wouldn’t give them away. I am fine. I am strong. I am not tired.

“But really, the jet lag was fatiguing already, as my flight would not have been direct, nor first class. I would have spent the night before, in tears of excitement and sadness. I would have said goodbye to my family. Cole would have dropped me off at the airport at an ungodly hour. I would have packed everything I needed into one suitcase, because I was perpetually afraid of over-packing. I was good at traveling light. I would know exactly what I needed for a single year in any country, and I would bring with me nothing more than that.

“The man at the airport was the manager, or the agent. He would be excited to have me there. He might have offered me food. ‘You must be hungry,’ and watched as I self-consciously nibbled at a salad or a snack or a sandwich. I was consumed with the need to appear self-contained, to seem like a person who could confront the unknown without fear or hesitation.

“On the flight over, I would have prepared myself for any living situation, for any working environment. I had signed a contract, so I knew I needed to last the year and I could do that, no matter what. When I got to the house, the dorm, the apartment, I would want nothing more than to close the door, lie back on the bed and exhale. I could do this for one minute. But then I would be ushered to training, to the office, to sign papers, get a Visa, make a bank account. Life was beginning again, this time here.”

Norcross: You played professional soccer for six years in six different countries. So that process that you just laid out happened again and again. What was it like to have to insert yourself into a whole other culture like that, repeatedly?

Cloepfil: You know, you learn a lot from it. I think that in that passage I really wanted to reiterate how familiar the pattern of it felt, even though each place was so radically different that I played. So you get … I’ve got my suitcase. I can do this again. I have to do this again. There’s a major resilience of it, with the larger goal always in the distance, of trying to compete at a very high level.

Norcross: Is there a country that you played in that you particularly loved, and that you felt valued women’s sports or at least women’s soccer?

Cloepfil: That’s an interesting and complicated question. I think every place I played was just so different. I made the most money playing in Korea – that’s sort of why I went there. I wanted to experience that everyone on the team was paid as a full-time employee and didn’t have to have other jobs or anything like that. So that was a certain value, but at the same time, we were in these massive stadiums that were totally empty.

Then I played my last season in Norway – a part of a season – and that felt the most complete to me in terms of, we were taken care of us as players. The league was at a high level and had a little bit of support, but nothing like what we have here in the U.S. now.

Norcross: And it must be said that you didn’t have the opportunity to play for the NWSL, which appears to have staying power in a way that the previous professional leagues in America for women soccer players did not have. I’m wondering if you feel like you missed something?

Cloepfil: Oh, I would have loved to play in the NWSL. I was in and out of the practice team in Seattle and loved that experience. I was just on the cusp of it. I think it’s an amazing league. You can never really feel like you missed out. That’s the thing with a sport and an experience that’s growing all the time. It’s like, it’s having a moment, it’s having a moment. It’s not really having a moment, it’s just perpetually growing. So at any moment, you’re gonna play. Then you’re gonna have to retire, and things are going to develop and change in a positive way.

I’m thankful for everything that came before me that allowed me to have the experience I did. I know already that it’s more sustainable for the people who are gonna start playing now. And that’s wonderful.

Norcross: You mentioned that story that you read for us a few minutes ago was the 14th minute of a 90-plus game. And it points up the fact that you have this unique structure for the book. It’s 90 shorter stories or vignettes, I guess. And it’s meant to mimic the 90 minutes of a professional soccer game, plus stoppage time. How did you decide on that format?

Cloepfil: If you don’t know, soccer has 90 minutes in it. I guess I was taking so many notes when I was playing overseas, and then came to the end of my career and was thinking this might actually be able to be a book. There was so much in it that didn’t feel chronological to me. I really wanted to avoid writing the sort of, “I was a child and then I grew up. I went to college. I played overseas. I had a good time, I retired and that’s it.” Like the traditional memoir that a celebrity might get away with writing.

For me, that was not what was interesting. These themes were coming up that were really profound, like gender, pain, endurance, endings, mortality – that sort of thing. So the minute allowed me, I think, this other sort of container, this feeling of the clock ticking – which I always felt while I was playing – the feeling of this inevitable ending. But then [it] also allowed me to move through time and through different countries in different ways. So the chronology is really more of a sense of beginning and a sense of endings. And those things were happening, like in the example I just read, all the time, over and over. It allowed me to move around in different ways and still feel contained.

Norcross: Yeah, I have to say, I became very aware of time when I was reading your book. There was just something about those minutes ticking by that gave the stories urgency, you know what I mean?

Cloepfil: Yeah, and that’s the feeling. Like a single game has that feeling, a single season has that feeling, and then life has that feeling. The same sort of arc. So I thought the game was a perfect way to hold it all.

Norcross: Georgia, was there a point in your life when you thought, you know, I wanna be a “blank.” Can you talk about when you filled in that “blank” with professional soccer player, and when you filled it in with writer?

Cloepfil: I think, as far as I can remember, I always wanted more than one thing. I think that was my problem. I felt so tortured by the fact that I had to decide, going to college, if I was going to be an athlete or a student. I love them both. And that’s the way we think about it. “Athletes are dumb,” like David Foster Wallace says, and artists and writers are not interested in sports. That’s how I had come to understand the two parts of myself. They could not really connect when I was young.

So I picked school. I went to a liberal arts school. I played Division 3 soccer. I still loved soccer by the time I came to the end of it, and continued playing for as long as I could, really. So I think it was more of an evolution of myself and my understanding of how these two parts of me actually connected and collaborated. I mean, I wanted them both. I write about a letter I wrote to myself in the third grade that said I wanted to “play soccer in college and be a writer.” I just didn’t know that they had to each take their turn.

Norcross: Oh, yeah, I get that. You mentioned where you went to college. I was just curious. You grew up in Portland, which meant you watched legendary players like Megan Rapinoe and Christine Sinclair play for the University of Portland team, which was a championship team in your own town. Why didn’t you go there?

Cloepfil: That’s funny. I think again, it was that decision... My club coach was actually the coach there for a while. He was a wonderful man and he wanted me to walk on there. I think I felt, still, that would have meant I was committing 100% to soccer and that I would have to leave my brain behind somewhere for some time… which now I’m thinking is not exactly the way it is.

But it is a much higher level of commitment, Division 1, their top program in the country, that sort of commitment, that I just was a little bit wary of. And then I ended up playing professionally, so I probably would have enjoyed it just fine. But those were the tortured binaries that I thought I was working within, stuck within, when I was a teenager making that decision. But I am so lucky I did have them to look up to when there was no professional soccer. There were the Portland Pilots. I went to so many games. It was such a blast, and they were amazing.

Norcross: You write about something in your book that I’d like you to read for us. And it’s about something that has always befuddled me as a soccer fan, and it’s something that we call a “flop.” It’s on page 56 – to use your terms, it’s minute 26 of 90. Can you read that for me?

Cloepfil: Totally. Yes.

[Reading excerpt from “The Striker and the Clock”] “Fans of soccer often complain about ‘flopping’ or ‘diving.’ When they want to draw a foul, players fall over after being lightly nudged or jostled. They roll and writhe after the slightest touch, grabbing their shin and contorting their faces into a silent scream. It’s a dramatic performance meant to draw the attention of the referee. Flopping is a practiced strategy that frustrates many viewers.

“Brazil’s Neymar Jr., one of the best players in the world, has a reputation for this behavior. I once read that he was taught the art of flailing as a young boy. His father wanted him to be able to protect himself. Neymar had always been one of the smallest players on the field.

“I was never taught to draw a foul or fall to the ground after contact in the penalty box. Instead, I learned that it drew praise to keep going, to fight and to endure through bodies and obstacles and tackles. Women never flop. It’s not because we’re philosophically opposed to the tactic, but because our toughness is our product and resilience helps prove the value of our efforts.

“There is no hiding that women athletes are, on the whole, slower and less capable of building muscle than our male counterparts. Our power manifests in subtler ways. In the world of sports, women must always remind ourselves, and anyone watching, that pain will not be the thing that impedes us. I remember the first big hit I took at football practice – a helmet to my cold bare leg that split my shin open. This, I thought, was part of the test. I stood up quickly and ignored the wound. By the end of practice, my sock was wet with a deep red stain.”

Norcross: I love that essay, because I have watched a lot of soccer, both men and women, and I have seen players on the men’s side writhe in pain on the soccer pitch after being bumped. And you always have to wonder if they’re really in pain, and often they’re not, because they get right back up and they start playing. But you never see that in the women’s game. And I know I’m making sweeping generalizations here, but I don’t think I’m far off the mark when I say it’s different. What is that difference about? Is it cultural? What is it?

Cloepfil: You know, everyone picks up on that. I think it changes a little bit. Now there’s more gamesmanship to the women’s game as it evolves. It’s, again, a smart tactic. If you can get a foul close to the goal, then you’re gonna have a really great opportunity. So it makes sense. But I thought of that pattern as perhaps a response to the challenge that women athletes have always faced, which is, already a lot of people don’t think we should be playing. In the history of women’s sports, which is not very long. I write about playing on the football team. A lot of parents were very concerned about my participating in an American football team. The history of the marathon has male officials preventing women from participating because their bodies were “too frail” to run.

Norcross: Until 1974 or something …?

Cloepfil: Right… crazy. Not that long ago. So I liked to think of that difference in the game as a representation of that history. And we have this opportunity, we better show that we actually can be here, we actually can be resilient. In this sense, we’re talking about it as positive. It’s nice not to see people fall over, but it’s also interesting to think of it in a critique of that.

Like, why has that been asked of us? Why is it necessary to endure? Why are our bodies “built for endurance” in a different way than men? When we talk about pain tolerance and all these things, maybe it’s because it’s what’s been demanded of us or what we’ve had to show to prove that we can compete in sports.

Norcross: You mentioned the injury that you suffered at the end of that piece – you’ve had many of them. You write about what happened to your knee, and what happened to your back and other parts of your body in your professional career. Now that you’re not doing it anymore, how does that show up in your body on a daily basis?

Cloepfil: I think I can recall having moments talking to doctors while I was playing. They’re saying, “You know, these are the consequences for the rest of your life,” and I just did not care. You could be two places at once saying I don’t care, I’m gonna get an injection in my knee so I can play, and then I also know that I’m gonna have to respect this decision in 20 years when it might take its toll.

I’m pretty lucky in terms of my injury history. I’ve had a couple of knee surgeries, a couple of other things. They definitely resurface. That is part of being so hard on your body for so long. And I write a lot about what it means to relearn the limits of your body and a little more respect for it. But also having respect for the person who decided to play through these things because that is what it takes. Watching the Olympics, it’s like Simone Biles pulled her calf and she’s still doing her floor routine. That is gonna hurt and for a long time after the Olympics, it will keep hurting. So it’s part of the game and I try to respect that, but also try to be a lot more gentle with my body now.

Norcross: You struggled with injuries, but that wasn’t what ultimately caused you to end your career. Looking back on it now, how would you describe to people the end of your professional soccer career and what brought it about?

Cloepfil: Yeah, that’s a good question. Writing this book was a way of figuring out what the end was for me. I was always thinking maybe this year, maybe next year. I had no real long-term vision for myself playing, and it ended up just being like a slow stepping away. I played in Norway. I came back and spent the summer with the team in Seattle, having a blast, but I had applied to an MSA program and gotten in. I knew those were also coveted spots. I just thought maybe it was time to not live out of a suitcase, and not be leaving my partner, my life and my job every nine months with no warning.

I think it was the right decision for me, but it felt a bit like an indefinite hiatus. Then I get a call from my agent and I’m like, “Sure, sure, I could still do this.” So that unending feeling of the relationship which still persists today, though I’ll never play at that level again. The feeling of loving it is still there, which I think is, in the end, really positive. But yeah, there was no climax. There was no clean break, which is a fun challenge for writing.

Norcross: No storybook ending. You’re a coach now, you coach at Whitman College in Walla Walla. What does it feel like to stand on the sidelines during a game?

Cloepfil: It’s fun. It’s really different. I’m an assistant coach, so I really don’t get the … even the head coach has more highs, lows and emotional intensity of it. I get to be the steady person that the girls can come talk to as they go through their highs and lows. I feel like I’m pretty well-equipped to be in that position, because I have had so many challenging and also joyful experiences in my career. Sometimes I wish I could join. I do join in sometimes at practice. But, no, it’s great. I love working with this age of person, and it’s not very hard for me to imagine myself back in their spot.

Norcross: We only have a few seconds left, but I’m curious – what would you like to write about now, now that it’s not soccer all the time?

Cloepfil: My next project is a lot about language, and the origins of language and mythologies around language and writing. It’s about ambition in the writing sphere and how those things happen. It’s not too far off, but it’s definitely about a different subject. I had a baby in the last year, so watching her learn to speak has been a really fascinating thing to see, to study and think about. So it will be different, but it will also be very similar, I think, in its interests.

Norcross: Georgia, thank you so much for this. I appreciate it.

Cloepfil: Thank you for having me. Thanks so much.

Norcross: Georgia Cloepfil is the author of “The Striker and the Clock.”

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