THIS IS YOUR GAME
Name: Margaret “Maggie” Perkins Age: Nineteen Class Year: Sophomore Position: Goalkeeper, #33 Hometown: Huntsville, Alabama
THIS IS YOUR MOMENT
TW: suicide
From the day that Maggie Perkins was born in Huntsville, Alabama to two loving parents, she knew that she was forever going to be her daddy’s little girl. It was easy enough to figure out. Even with multiple deployments to Iraq, his support and love through Facetime was enough to help her and her mother through without him. Maggie and her mother still never felt like they had lived alone for a good portion of their lives; her father was always there to help them in one way or another.
The best times for Maggie, however, was when her father would come home. Her smile would instantly become brighter, one of the things her father loved most about his baby girl. For hours they would play lacrosse in the backyard, and even though Maggie was never as good as her father, he played against her like she was an equal instead of a subordinate. He watched her close, and seemed proud that his daughter wanted to be like him in so many ways. But, if there was anything her father did well, it was hide all of his secrets from his family—especially his daughter, who thought he was perfect.Â
For years it went on like this—until his final deployment. Maggie could remember the happiness in her nine-year-old voice when her father walked back into the airport and into their lives permanently, but it was like a piece of him was missing. She still was immersed in all the things he had gotten her to love: her first prize in the science fair garnered a small smile, and a lacrosse victory rewarded pizza—but what she truly wanted was his love and, as distant and as removed as he had become, that was the one thing that he couldn’t seem to give fully.
Maybe she should have seen the signs, but as a child budding into a teenager, all she wanted was her father’s praise and love, and she couldn’t see anything else. So when her mother came home from a night of work to find her father sitting in the garage with his car on, it was apparent his deployments hadn’t been the only distance between them.
The funeral process went by in a blur, and Maggie couldn’t bear to look at her father in the state he was in as they put him into the ground. It was something she learned she couldn’t face, something she couldn’t deal with the way her mother had seemed to. Day by day, the house became emptier, her father’s clothing, photos of him smiling, and every memory of his existence was put into a Rubbermaid bin that her mother kept down the basement. If anything, it only made Maggie more closed off and sad in high school than it brought her peace, or made her happy. Her mother may have felt better with reminder of him gone, but Maggie needed him around. She wanted to keep him alive as long as she possibly could.
Lacrosse became her outlet in high school. Every emotion she blocked out was let out through her lacrosse stick. It didn’t earn her many friends, even with her sunny demeanor off the field, but it wasn’t what she was completely focused on. As much as she loved the sport, and as much as it brought her closer to her father, she began to find greater solace in his old work, something she had dug out of the basement without her mother’s permission and began to thumb through. He was invested in stem cell discovery, often noting research she had never heard of before.
Instead of shunning it, or becoming confused or overwhelmed, she became completely invested, and she spent all of her time between lacrosse practices in the lab at her school trying to decipher every note of his research—she felt, increasingly, that she had to do this. It was for her father.
SEIZE IT WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT
Maggie found out the hard way that the schools that wanted to give her scholarships for lacrosse didn’t seem to have the same focus on scientific programs that she wanted to major in. To finish the research that her father started, she knew she’d need professional equipment and a workspace that was going to allow her full control over her research. After some searching, she landed her sights on Palmetto. She knew she wasn’t going to get a full scholarship, but her mother was willing to help. And so she made a choice: it wasn’t athletics that she was pursuing this time around, it was her research.
It ended up that, when she wasn’t looking, things seemed to fall into place for her. Being cut from the first round of Palmetto lacrosse tryouts was upsetting, but she didn’t know there was someone watching in the stands. Someone that saw raw potential in her skill. That person just happened to be David Wymack, who ended up recruiting her as a backup goalkeeper for the Foxes. Maggie had never played Exy, but she was more than willing to learn to keep the love of sport alive in her. It wasn’t lacrosse, but maybe that was a good thing: Exy could be a sport that was all her own, that was going to help her expand her own identity, rather than her father’s.
MAGGIE PERKINS is portrayed by HALEY LU RICHARDSON and is CLOSED
