If 2001 was a dream come true, the next year became a nightmare. During the WUSA All-Star Classic in Fort Lauderdale in February, Whalen suffered a fractured rib and punctured lung in a collision with her USWNT teammate Shannon MacMillan.
"I was at the top of my game," she said. "[The injury] was painful but it felt fine mentally. In my brain, I was just ‘we're going to fix this up and I'm going to keep going, fix this up and I’ll go back to the top.’” It was brutal, but it felt fine.”
She returned to the Power but soon tore her ACL and MCL in a collision with German star Birgit Prinz.
"I still felt tough mentally," Whalen said. "I'll fix this, and I’ll go back to the top."
While recuperating, an infection from the surgery made Whalen deathly sick.
"That's when the mentality started changing," she said. "When I had a physical injury, I knew what it was, and I could identify it and fix it. But when I was sick and I couldn't get better, it was just so depressing. There was something about not being able to identify the problem and feeling so terrible at the same time [that] was just chipping away at any hopefulness."
Doctors had to remove anything that had been inserted in her knee that led to the infection. Whalen faced the reality that her soccer career was over.
"It wasn't as simple as you push yourself and you figure out what's next," she said. "I was not in a positive place at all. I had eating disorders. I was really depressed. I lost tons of weight just because I was so depressed. How do you get through it? You've got great support. It’s not like I was mentally tough at that point at all. That's why support helps."
Whalen climbed out of that hole thanks to a support group that included family, her fiancé and now husband, Jon Hess - a former NCAA lacrosse champion at Princeton - and former teammates.
When she was recuperating in Greenlawn, N.Y., Whalen had a catheter inserted into her arm and walked around with a pole and an IV bag. "I couldn't go in the car. I couldn't do anything," she said.
Until four former Power teammates - Emily Stauffer, Jen O'Sullivan, Kristy Whelchel and Katie Tracy - stopped by.
"They borrowed somebody's car - a fast car, like a sports car – and drove out from the city, just to drive me around for a half hour between medicine,” she said. “That's a four-hour thing for them just to do that. That's the kind of support people need.."
Whalen continued her recovery and attended Fordham University to pursue her master’s in psychology as Hess drove her to and from the Bronx for night classes. She was in a knee brace and needed crutches to get around.
She also rediscovered her confidence and motivation and began training for the 2004 New York Marathon.
"Every time I started to run, which was a passion of mine, my legs would fall apart," Whalen said. "They would swell, and it would be super painful, and the PT people would be like, 'OK, you might not run any more. Start walking. You can swim.' That's devastating. Oh my God, I'm like 25 and I'm basically crippled. So, I figured there was nothing to lose. I was pushing to see what would happen. That was kind of my mojo. If I can run for a minute, I can run for three. If I can run for three, I can probably run for eight. The training gave me purpose."
The pushing paid off and she eventually ran the marathon in four hours, 19 minutes and 38 seconds.
"That was awesome, but hard," she said.
