She was, in her own words, a “bat-shit crazy, sports-mad kid” who, somehow, managed to cling on to the Big Dipper of a traumatic childhood to become a global hockey superstar when Ireland were shock silver medallists at the 2018 World Cup.
Ayeisha McFerran’s heroics also clinched the tournament’s best goalkeeper gong and, from behind all the padding and superhero saves, emerged a chatty 22-year-old from Co Antrim with an extraordinary life story.
Her mum, a single-parent of four, got cancer when she was just seven and died when she was 14. McFerran, like two of her siblings, ended up in foster care, arriving with her belongings in black refuse sacks.
Hockey was the one place she felt normal and where, with help from key adults, she defied all the odds.
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She made her Irish senior debut the day after her 18th birthday and has twice been nominated for FIH Goalkeeper of the Year. Apart from talent, her own cussedness and competitiveness were doubtless factors.
When a primary school teacher once asked if she ever stopped talking McFerran didn’t speak a single word to him for three days, replying only by writing.
She failed the SATs (NCAA entry tests) when she initially went down the American college scholarship route but successfully repeated.
When she landed one, at the University of Louisville, she still needed the help of social services to part-fund her time in Kentucky and almost left early on, yet battled through and graduated with a degree in sports science.
Her World Cup heroics attracted a sponsorship with Red Bull – “they own my head” she jokes of the branding on her helmet – and the opportunity to play professionally in the Netherland’s vaunted Hoofdklasse league.
She was also part of the Irish team that finally qualified for the 2020 Olympics, by which time she had met Anne Veenendaal, the Dutch goalkeeper who starred in their gold-medal shoot-out victory in Paris last Summer. They’ve been together five years and share an apartment, and their beloved border collie Remi, in Utrecht.
So far, so much the stuff of dreams for the hyperactive child from Larne who overcame so much, but McFerran’s life has since taken a few nosedives.
She tore a medial crucial ligament (MCL) a year ago, which, for a hockey goalkeeper, is almost as bad as an ACL because they use the insides of their knees so much.
It happened two minutes into a club game and just six weeks after Ireland’s last shot at qualifying for the Paris Olympics evaporated in a defeat by GB.
Out of the Olympics and all national and club action for six months, it was a double whammy.
Truth is, McFerran had already survived much worse.
During four seasons at KV Kampong (which intersected with Covid) they went through six head coaches. She describes her experience there as “turbulent” and “toxic.”
A self-confessed over-thinker, she was already feeling numb by the time those surreal, fan-less 2021 Olympics rolled around and her mood darkened further in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup.
After Ireland finished bottom of their group and joint 11th of 16 teams, the floodgates burst.
She found herself repeatedly weeping with Irish squad psychologist Mags McCarthy, “our team mum, the absolute glue that keeps all the shit together.”
“I took a break from the national team after that,” she explains. “I had a kind of a breakdown. There was just a lot of trauma in my life from before, from my childhood, that I hadn’t really dealt with. I’d always pushed it to the side, thought ‘I’ll deal with it later’.
“After the 2022 World Cup I just couldn’t do it any more. I almost quit the sport, quit doing everything that I love and I knew that wasn’t right. That forced me to seek help and look after myself, that’s when I started therapy.”
The support provided by McCarthy and others, including a clinical psychologist at the Irish Institute of Sport, helped her to rebalance and also to spot potential dips in the last 12 months.
“Whenever you’re doing all this training alone, with so much time on your hands, things start to pop up that you’ve maybe kept in a box. That’s when things can start to explode so, for me, having those people in my life was really important.
“To this day I speak to my therapist every week. I think it’s really important to have that space to talk to someone who really helps you.”
Red Bull came up trumps too, immediately offering access to their Athletic Performance Centre (APC) outside Salzburg.
It’s a huge diagnostic and rehab centre used by their teams (soccer and motorsport) and superstar ambassadors like Formula 1’s Max Verstappen, pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis and footballers Neymar and Trinity Rodman.
McFerran stayed in a local hotel and, luckily, didn’t need surgery: “Red Bull gave me the space, time and expertise to get functional again which was really phenomenal.”
After two months in Austria she continued her rehab back at the Institute in Dublin but people’s reaction to the injury triggered something else that has always bothered her.
“When I got injured a lot of people assumed I had nothing else in my life outside of hockey, but I do. Everyone in life has their job but that’s not who they are.
“I did a course in digital marketing during Covid, I’m currently studying for a Masters (in high performance coaching), I’m interested in different charities. I had a lot of other things going on.
“A lot of people are just known for being an athlete but actually there’s a whole story and an individual behind that, which is way more important and interesting.”
This prompted her to start a podcast called Unboxed, which aims to do exactly that with elite athletes. She believes the public relate far more to honesty and vulnerability from their sports stars and, in her own case, hopes her story will inspire others in foster care.
“I know my childhood was a bit different, that I struggled with a lot of things, but everyone has their own story. If you don’t show that you can open up and connect with other people it’s gonna be very difficult for you to get through it.”
She has just wrapped the first Unboxed series by interviewing Olympic rowing medallist Aifric Keogh and is already working on a second.
She got back to club action in September and is currently in Santiago, Chile, where her brilliant triple save against New Zealand helped Ireland keep a clean sheet in their group to reach Saturday’s FIH Nations Cup semi-final against USA (7pm, live streamed on TG4 YouTube).
She joined HC Tilburg two seasons ago and reckons she’s now 70 pre cent fluent in Dutch, which must be handy considering she has her team-mates watching Derry Girls.
“The injury meant I only got to play half a season for them last year but we’ve got a new coach and the group is brilliant. We really want to look out for each other.”
Even in the Netherlands, club hockey doesn’t pay a big wedge so she has a second job, coaching in a local gym.
“Some of the men (in Dutch clubs) get paid €50,000 to €60,000 a year but the women are nowhere near that. Most of the girls are working outside hockey.
“I still think that’s crazy when you see how much a footballer’s getting paid to do a dive, a few rolls on the pitch, scream that he’s in agony, and then get up and run. Like, I could do that for half the price!” she says, only half-joking.
Physically and psychologically, McFerran is back in a better place.
“My therapist always says I need to give myself more compassion. As an athlete, you’re always trying to strive for the next thing, thinking you have to be perfect and always keep improving but there’s days that’s just not realistic, there’s days you just have to step back.
“I’m not always trying to seek the next thing now. I accept that I’ve come bloody far in my life. To play for Ireland however many times I have, to have done all these tournaments, that’s an absolute privilege.
“So I know I can look back now and say, yeah, the journey wasn’t easy, but it’s a privilege to do it and not everyone can.”
