Karla Martinez

Never stopping. As hard as it may have gotten sometimes, as other times where it made it feel like everyone in my program was working against me, or if it made me feel like, dang, maybe this isn't for me, I just kept going. I kept going every time, and every time there was a light at the other end.

Nothing changes if nothing changes. You cannot keep doing the same thing, expecting a different result.

I would say, keep your chin up high, and try to keep your ears only so open, because you're gonna hear a lot of nonsense when it comes to being a woman in the industry. And, of course, you want to take any criticism or lessons as people want to give them, but there's also people who are going to tell you a lot of things with the wrong intention. So I'd say, make certain things that are thrown at you or said to you as a woman with a grain of salt.

I think the challenges really remain the same. It's you always gotta make sure to keep going. For me specifically, this is my first time working in soccer, so there's a lot of new things about the season that I'm having to learn and work around, but it's all about just keeping going. For example, the traveling - I'm not used to traveling commercial, so traveling with so many bags, or having such long trips. In a week, we're about to go on a two-week-long trip. So, that's gonna be completely new to me. I think it's just making sure you keep going, making sure that you know that sports is ever-changing, you know, it's never gonna stay the same, you're never gonna be comfortable, and that's okay.

I think just staying true to yourself is super important, and being able to self-reflect, you know, being able to call yourself out when you're not performing enough, you know, being able to acknowledge what areas of yourself you may need a little more help in, or may need to put extra work in. I think it's being able to look in the mirror and analyze, okay, how can I do better?