Brea Griffiths, An Incredible Story Of Survival

Back from 2002-04 TigerBlog was the Office of Athletic Communications women's soccer contact.

That was a pretty good time to be the contact for that team. The Tigers in that stretch won three Ivy League titles and went to three NCAA tournaments, and in 2004 they won four NCAA games to reach the Final Four, the only such time in Ivy history.

It was a team loaded with star players. Now, as TB thinks back to those teams, he can still come up with one word to describe each player.

Diana Matheson? Smooth. Esmeralda Negron? Unstoppable. Emily Behncke? Graceful. Maura Gallagher? Crafty. Janine Willis? Tenacious. 

When it came to Brea Griffiths, he might have used this word: Indestructible.

That's how she played. She started 71 of 73 career games, and was just a force on the Princeton backline. She wasn't the fastest player on the team, but she let very little make its way past her to the goalkeepers. 

As it turns out, that's probably a really good choice for her. No matter what life through at her in an effort to destroy her, she just pushed back, pushed through and never stopped fighting.

And, for sure, she had some big holes to climb out of along the way. Huge ones. The kinds that many people never escape.

In fact, as one of her best friends and former teammates said, "There were weeks and months where I wouldn't have been surprised to get a phone call with really bad news."

In a nutshell, Brea went from being a two-time All-Ivy League selection and two-time captain of one of the best teams Princeton Athletics has ever produced to getting a master's degree from Yale to being a three-time mother - and then having it all fall apart for her.

Her health started to deteriorate after she ran the 2007 Boston Marathon, and it started her on a more than a decade run of pain and anguish, both physical and mental, starting with the idea that no doctor could really put a handle on what was wrong with her, other than she was essentially allergic to pretty much everything.

Eventually she had to leave her children and spend time essentially homeless in the deserts of the American West, in search of the purest air she could find to get all of the toxins out of her body.  

TigerBlog wrote about Brea's story yesterday. You can see the entire feature HERE.

TB spoke with her last week, on a Zoom call from her current home, in her mother's basement outside of Toronto. Brea had shared a bunch of pictures with him, and you can see them in the story. Essentially they show you just how far down the disease dragged her and then how much she's bounced back, without any real explanation for why as well.

Also for the story TB spoke with two former women's soccer players, Brea's classmates Sylvia Morelli Vitousek and Catherine Byrd Jeydel, also by Zoom. Catherine, who was known simply as "Byrdie" on the wonen's soccer team, lives in Norfolk, having graduated from UVa law school. Sylvia, who has a Ph.D. in psychology, lives in California. 

Both are married (Sylvia to another member of the Class of 2005, former men's volleyball player Sean Vitousek). Catherine has three children, including a 10-month old daughter who was the fourth person on the Zoom call. Sylvia has one daughter, with a son due in two months.

It was great to catch up with them. And through the conversation, it was clear just how much they cared about their teammate, how worried they were about her and now how thrilled they are that she's come so far back.

What also stood out was how the Princeton Athletics experience guides them still, and how much it meant during this entire process.

Here's a quote from Catherine Byrd, or Catherine Jeydel actually:
"The mentality you have to have, whether you’re training in the preseason or trying to retrain your body in the desert, is that you have to be committed. It’s hard. Every step along the way challenges you and gives you reasons to quit. Maybe it doesn’t seem worth it. You have to stay the course. I used to say ‘close your eyes and run’ during our fitness test. I would say that to Brea. When it gets hard, close your eyes and run and you’ll get there. Close your eyes and get out of your body’s way. Let your body take over.” 

And then there's something Brea said:
There were moments where I said ‘this isn’t how it’s supposed to be,’” she says. “I kept telling myself that I was a Princeton soccer player. I’m resilient. I’m tough. I never wanted to believe I was a weak person who couldn’t make it. I had that identity, of being a Princeton athlete. I held onto that. The real me is strong and tenacious and powerful. And hard-working. I had to hold onto that. I had determination and motivation.

That's what Princeton Athletics means to the people who compete here. That's what Princeton Athletics means when it talks about the educational value of competing for the Tigers. 

It never goes away. The lessons learned competing for Princeton. The teammates and friendships made. They stay with them forever.

There's a lot more in the story about Brea. And here's a spoiler alert: It has a happy ending.

So yeah. Indestructible. 

It's the right word for Brea Griffiths.