On legs she can't feel, Eckerd soccer player looks for new goal (Tampa Bay Times)

By Lisa Gartner
Tampa Bay Times Staff Writer
November 10, 2013

ST. PETERSBURG — The first time she learned to walk, she kicked grapefruits across the kitchen floor, so there was never a time that Erin Davis didn't play soccer. She played with the neighborhood kids and she played with the boys, the ones four years her senior, and by the time Erin was 13, colleges were filling her mailbox, wondering if she'd come play with them too.

Soon she'd join the most elite pool of players in the country, on the United States youth national team. She'd play on five teams at once, and train at the Bradenton athletic academy that gave Eli Manning to football and Ian Desmond to baseball. The Olympics committee would send letters to her high school. Erin can't come to school today because ...

Suddenly there was pain. Pain in her legs when she ran and kicked the ball, pain in her head from the bad things that had happened, the things she told herself weren't real.

To live a life without the pain, Erin Davis had surgery to kill the nerve in her left leg; nerve damage took care of the right. Today, 26 and still playing, she can't feel anything beneath her knees: not the ankles she covers with shin guards, not the cleats she laces up over her feet. She can't feel the ground she is running on. She can't feel the ball she is kicking past goalies.

She returned to the field for the first time in six years this fall as a mid-fielder for Eckerd College's Division II team.

Soccer could help Davis find closure from the only dream she's ever had. But it's hard to find a new dream, when you don't let go of the old one.

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