Nobody Likes Raisins

As a former Division 1 college soccer player who first handedly experienced verbal and mental abuse from my coaches, I felt extremely compelled to write/direct a film that can make positive change. At the time of my college soccer career, I became extremely depressed and suicidal. Soccer was my identity. To be abused by someone in a powerful position over me put me in a very vulnerable place. This film touches on that power dynamic between player, coach and team but is translatable to any other aspect of life or situation where people who are in more powerful positions take advantage and are abusive.

With this film, I hope to shine light on the problematic dynamics of sports culture in hopes of starting a conversation that will allow us to address these problems. In recent events of women’s professional soccer and other sports, more and more athletes are starting to share stories about their experiences of abuse by their coaches. There is no better time than now for this film to be shared. Specifically with this film, the audience will get to see what my personal experience of abuse was in college sports. These topics tend to be dark and heavy but this film shares the story in a way that is easy for an audience to digest.

This film also touches on validation of your own experiences as this is one of the major things I struggled with. My experience was not validated by my teammates or anyone around me at the time. It made me feel like I wasn't a real person and that everything I was experiencing was not real. Their decision to not speak out against the abuse or admit what was going on was because of fear. Fear enables coaches to keep abusing their players without any consequences. With this surreal and satirical comedy, I hope encourage people to speak up and also help people see that everything they experience is valid and true because they lived it, and that is enough.

Finally, I hope to offer a space that allows us and encourages us to laugh instead of cry. A dear friend once told me “sometimes the best way to address your trauma is to laugh at it,” and so we will.