NASHVILLE, Tenn. — It didn’t look like much on the schedule, just an August exhibition game against Bowling Green. For a Vanderbilt team coming off an NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 run and eyeing similarly lofty goals this season, it was a glorified scrimmage—a chance to break preseason monotony by tackling unfamiliar faces under the gaze of real referees.
For Ally Bollig, the night before the Commodores took the field, it was why she couldn’t sleep. She knew she needed to, but she was restless. Too many thoughts raced through her mind. She reached for her phone and called her dad. Her first coach and forever mentor, she knew he would understand. Four years is a long time to wait for your next game.
“It’s almost as if I played the game in my head first—to try to calm myself down and know that I could handle it,” Bollig recalled. “I hadn’t had that feeling in so long, so I didn’t really know how to cope with it, other than to make a phone call to my dad to help me relax.”
She was hardly the first Commodore to be nervous ahead of her first fall game, exhibition or otherwise. Except she wasn’t a freshman. Or a sophomore. Or even a junior. Soon after the game against Bowling Green, she settled into her seat for the first class of her senior year.
Until she came on as a substitute against Bowling Green, Bollig hadn’t played in a fall game in more than four years. A string of knee surgeries and setbacks wiped out her final high school season and first three college seasons. Not satisfied with merely making it back, she’s now a midfield starter capable of playing 90 minutes and changing games.
She never gave up on the sport, even when isolation and frustration tested her resolve. Nor did head coach Darren Ambrose give up on her, watching someone who had played the game like a grown woman when still just a recruit grow into a leader with perspective beyond her years.
Some things—and some people—are worth the wait. Sometimes daring to grow means finding the patience to endure a very long wait.
“It’s a story that is heartwarming and full of strife and emotion and resilience defined,” Ambrose said. “In the athletic world, short of life and death, I don’t know how you find a better story of resilience—because the greatest thing you have as an athlete is your health and then your fitness. Ally’s had neither for three years. And now she starts and is a massive part of how we want to play.”