- May 3, 2024
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It’s fall, only a few months into the school year. On a particular Saturday afternoon, many of the students at Flagler Palm Coast High School are trying on button-up shirts and slacks. Others are making sure their dress fits properly and their makeup perfect.
It’s homecoming night.
But one FPC student never had to get ready for the big dance.
Instead, Ashley McGlashen was making sure her shin guards are in place and her cleats are laced up.
McGlashen, a senior this year at FPC, never made it to a high school homecoming.
McGlashen began playing soccer when she was about 4 years old. She moved to Flagler County with her family when she was 8, and began playing club soccer at 10.
As a freshman at FPC, McGlashen made coach Pete Hald’s varsity team. On a senior-laden team, she was a starter, playing mostly outside midfielder and center midfielder.
During her sophomore season, McGlashen was a key player on the Lady Bulldogs varsity team as the center midfielder. Earlier in the season, however, McGlashen went in for a tackle and sprained her ankle. She had to come out to get her ankle taped, but made it back onto the field. That was just the beginning.
Despite the continuous pain while playing, she not only finished the rest of her sophomore season and club soccer that summer, she played her entire junior season, too. (As a junior, she led the Lady Bulldogs in goals and assists.)
Everything was going according to plan for McGlashen to reach her dreams of playing college soccer.
And the summer before her senior season, her dream came true.
McGlashen verbally committed to the Florida Institute of Technology, an NCAA Division II school, in Melbourne.
However, late in the summer before her senior year, she was with the FPC team at a camp at Florida State University. It was an afternoon training session that nearly delivered the knockout punch to her aspirations of playing collegiate soccer.
Her ankle rolled over one too many times. She pulled herself out of camp. When she returned home, she had no options left. She needed to visit the doctor and get an MRI.
The result: torn ligaments in McGlashen’s ankle. Surgery would be the only way to fix the pain.
McGlashen weighed all of her options with her parents and doctors.
With tears in her eyes, McGlashen looked to her parents. She knew that if she wanted to play college soccer, she had to get the surgery and miss her senior season.
In June 2011, McGlashen went under the knife. The recovery process, her doctor told her, would be four to eight months.
There were definitely trials and tribulations in the months following the surgery. She wasn’t able to play soccer or really do much exercising for about five months.
The hardest part, McGlashen said, was when she found out her college coaches might not want her any longer.
“The doctor said no college would (take her) with the way her ankle was,” said Ashley McGlashen’s mom, Lonnie.
The coaches told McGlashen they needed to do two re-evaluations to make sure she was healthy for college soccer.
“I was told by a lot of people that it wouldn’t be the same and I’d be slower,” McGlashen said. But she would have none of it. She continued to recover.
She competed at an identification camp for her coaches, who left more impressed with McGlashen than when they initially recruited her.
Last week, McGlashen signed to play at FIT in the fall. “Right now, I feel that I’m better than when I started,” she said.
She overcame adversity, missed homecoming dances, and drove three hours to Orlando and back for practice three times a week. But she made it.
“I have sacrificed a lot of my life to play soccer, but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” McGlashen said. “Soccer is the love of my life, and sometimes you have to go through hard times to accomplish your dreams.”
