Rylee Foster admits she wasn’t too concerned over the result or how she played when she finally made her Everton debut. It’s not that she lacks determination or commitment – anything but – rather the fact that she knows she’s just lucky to be alive, never mind still following a career in professional football, a dream she’s been aiming to fulfil since she was just 10 years old.
Debut and Clean Sheet
Having started with neighbours Liverpool, the goalkeeper also had a previous spell with the Blues but did not play. However, after returning to Everton in August, she finally made her bow aged 28, keeping a clean sheet in the 2-0 victory over Birmingham City in the Women’s Players Cup at Goodison Park.
While holidaying in Finland in 2021, she was part of a group of five friends driving to the capital Helsinki when the weather turned, their car hydroplaned and spun out of control. Miraculously, all of them survived but having received emergency spinal treatment, Foster woke up in a neck collar with seven fractures in her neck and vertebrae, while also injuring her cheekbone, knee and lung.
Reflections on Survival
Reflecting on turning out at ‘The Grand Old Lady’ for the first time, she told the ECHO: “I think anytime you step in between the posts, there’s a little bit of pressure. You got to prove yourself, but for me, I went into that game just and it sounds bad, but I didn’t put any pressure on myself. What’s the worst thing that could have happened? We could have lost.
“I got to go and be free. Scott [Phelan, the head coach] has given me the pass to go and express myself, do what I do and play how I see it and that’s exactly what I did. Hopefully I get the call again and we just keep on building and I keep on getting more experience.”
Foster added: “I think I had a five-year plan after my car accident. It was to get back to the WSL. People could look at it and go ‘she’s not starting’, but it doesn’t matter to me at this point. It’s about getting myself back at the top level because I wasn’t going to be here, I was not meant to be here.
“I was written off in so many different ways. First of all, the accident should have killed me, the injuries should have killed me. You just keep on going, looking back going, how has this person survived? So, to be back in the WSL competing is quite a big landmark.”
Support and Strength
She spoke of her teammates and coaches: “I love training with Courtney [Brosnan, first-choice keeper at Everton Women]. We were just talking about this on the training pitch today that we have such a good union. The group of us were so positive and we just love supporting each other. She’s a great goalkeeper to learn from, but also to keep pushing and for myself to develop with and then Ian [McCaldon, the Everton Women goalkeeper coach] on top of that.
“You’re going to feel a broken leg for the rest of time, you’re going to feel a torn muscle, but I’d say I’m a lot stronger, physically, mentally, and emotionally than I was before the accident. I’ve been built brick by brick, little Lego pieces that put me back together.”
Living with Hearing Loss
Overcoming adversity is something that Foster – who hails from Kitchener, Ontario, some 62 miles west of Toronto, Canada’s largest city – has been doing all her life. Even before her accident, she’d carved out a career in professional football despite suffering from hearing loss.
She said: “I think when you grow up in a family with that, I guess you call it disability, you adapt to everyone else, but to be a part of something and understand where my mum was coming from and the hardships that she had, with her hearing loss, it was quite unique.
“My youngest sister wasn’t doing well in school, so we got testing done for her ears and then ended up using me because I was excelling in school, thriving and everything, like this is what her hearing should look like and it was the complete opposite. It was my hearing that was actually quite poor.
“So, it goes to show, everyone was living in a different way and thriving in different ways and adopting different ways, but at the same time, you’re all going through the same triumph in life and the leading example is my mum. So, it was cool to be able to experience that with everyone.”
She explained: “It was really good in school. I enjoyed school, so I was always focused, always sitting in the front of class. I think it was just something that was a hidden coping mechanism that I didn’t really pick up on. But being in front of the class, hearing the teacher all clear, that allowed me to focus a lot more without distractions.
“Phonak has been the brand that I’ve worn since a kid, which is quite unique. My mum wore Phonak hearing aids from when she was a younger teenager into adult years. She now has cochlear implants on both sides, which means there’s no hearing at all left except when she wears the device.”
Foster explains that while her condition has always been a challenge for her, it’s different from being deaf. She said: “It’s quite important, to explain the difference, just, like on any spectrum. There are people who are visually impaired, versus blind.
“The impairment is they can’t see as clearly as everyone else, but you can still see. Whereas I can’t hear as clearly, so I’m hearing impaired, not deaf.
“My impairment is moderate. I’m very good at coping, so lip reading is something that I relied on. Also, not putting myself in a lot of noisy scenarios. I’m not someone who likes to go out and be in noisy social environments, I’m used to smaller groups.
“But when I’m on the football pitch, all I’ve ever known is training without hearing aids and it’s quite unique because I rely on different senses. So, visual cues and vibrations.
“Being a goalkeeper that makes it a lot easier because it is quite an isolated position. I am the one giving instruction and if there is instruction from the sideline, we’re all yelling anyway.
“As a kid, I never played with them. At first it was because of sweat resistance and water resistance and all those kind of things because there wasn’t the technology then but I’ve actually coped so well and I almost prefer it because I’m in my bubble, I’m in my world.”
Family Roots and Passion for Football
Although ‘soccer’ as it is called in Canada is typically lower down the pecking order of major sports, like former Everton goalkeeper Asmir Begovic who moved from Bosnia and Herzegovina as a child to Edmonton, being part of an immigrant family – in her case having grandparents who were Scousers – helped Foster to develop a passion for the game from a young age.
She said: “Football is what I wanted to do from like the age of 10. It was weird. My parents sat me on the counter, they said: ‘what do you want to do with your life?’ I had a list of things I wanted to do. I said: ‘Play professional football, go to the World Cup, go to the Olympics’. So, there was no other real choice.
“I got my education. I’m lucky I’m a scholar, I’m quite intelligent. Even with a disability, it’s easy to get sidetracked and to go down a different road but my mentality, my willpower has always just been to get through it. Like don’t let anything get in the way. It’s not been my hearing that has got in the way. It’s not been an accident or injuries or anything like that.
“There’s a time in the women’s game where we couldn’t just not go to school. I was very fortunate to have the route to America, I got a scholarship to a play in the US and at the time it was the highest level of playing for my age. That was very, very competitive and you get your education at the same time. So you’re living the life of a professional footballer, while you’re going to get a four-year degree.”
Perhaps naturally, Foster gravitated towards England’s most passionate football city from where her family originated and now she has had the honour of playing for both Liverpool and Everton.
She said: “Football is not black and white and you can’t always smell the roses. For me, it’s always about representing a badge and wearing it with pride, no matter who I’m representing and to be in Merseyside is what’s most important to me.
“My grandparents were from Liverpool, from Wavertree, at the end of the day, it’s not about being a Red or Blue, it’s just representing the people. That’s what matters most to me and I get to do that. I get to do that in so many different elements, not only as a footballer, but I represent the city and the people, like I represent the disability sector with my hearing loss and the kids who are in my position, who didn’t have a version of me. I didn’t have a me to look up to.”
Embracing Life After the Accident
While it’s been a difficult journey, she now feels in a better place than she’s ever been to have come out of the other side and still be striving for her goals.
Foster said: “You take in the moment of being alive. Every day, there’s something that reminds you of how fortunate you are to have a life, whether it’s someone else’s triumph, whether it’s someone else’s misfortune.
“You’re always thankful for the moments you have. It’s very cliched but everyone says that life is so short and you should embrace everything that you have. You could be gone in a second and until you live that and experience it yourself, you don’t actually understand how valuable that is.
“It was something that I’ve had to learn to embrace because of my car accident. I realised that with the brain injury that I sustained, I had a lot less energy and a lot less cognitive function to focus on hearing and environments.
“I was realising that I was struggling and that’s when I approach Phonak and said: ‘I would love to work with you guys as there’s a big part of me that I don’t understand.’
“So, the car accident has brought me this opportunity to speak, the opportunity to own this.”
