JENI O’DOWD: Sam Kerr teaches us the uncomfortable truth that there’s no success without struggle

Social media is full of advice about protecting your peace.

Set boundaries, avoid negativity and cut out people from your life who drain your energy.

There is even a trend called the “soft life”, which encourages people to reject hustle culture and put their wellbeing first.

Which sounds lovely. I’d quite like a stress-free life myself. Husband and three teenagers permitting.

But listening to football superstar Sam Kerr speak in Sydney last week, I began wondering whether anyone has ever achieved anything extraordinary by avoiding stress altogether.

Kerr was speaking to a small group of journalists about her appointment as the first Aussie ambassador for luxury Swiss watchmaker Richard Mille.

But what struck me wasn’t just the spectacular pink-and-blue watch on her wrist. It was what she revealed about the sacrifices behind her success.

Kerr has spent years living overseas away from her family, missing birthdays and weddings, and was even unable to attend her grandmother’s funeral as she was playing football.

“I’ve been living out of home since I was 17. I’ve missed a lot of my family’s life,” she told Kanebridge News. “I’ve missed a lot of weddings. I’ve missed funerals. I’ve missed so many things that people don’t see.

“You have to love what you’re doing. You have to want to sacrifice.

“Everyone makes sacrifices, of course, and what I do is a massive privilege, but there comes a lot of sacrifice with it.”

Sacrifice is a side of success we rarely talk about, and perhaps that’s where the conversation about girls and sport should begin.

Although we are living through a golden age for women’s sport, girls are dropping out of organised sport at about twice the rate of boys during their teenage years.

This is at a time when Australia has never had more female sporting role models. As well as Kerr, we have Mary Fowler, Jessica Fox and Mollie O’Callaghan, just to name a few.

Women’s sport has never received more media coverage, sponsorship or public attention.

Yet while 83 per cent of Australian girls participate in sport at age nine, that figure falls to just 23 per cent by 15, with research suggesting various reasons including school pressure, body image concerns, feeling judged by others and period-related issues.

All are valid.

But Kerr offered another explanation when I asked why she thought so many girls leave sport in their mid-teens.

“There comes a time in everyone’s career around that age where it becomes really difficult to stay in the sport, whether it’s because of funding or lack of opportunity,” she said.

In other words, at some point, a pathway starts to disappear.

Kerr was definitely onto something.

A report released by UK charity Women in Sport earlier this year found what it described as a growing “dream deficit” among girls.

It said that despite all the attention given to women’s sport, fewer girls believe they can actually make it to the top. In other words, if you can’t see a pathway ahead, why keep making sacrifices to get there?

“Girls are deeply inspired by what they see, but that inspiration sits alongside a sharper awareness of the inequalities and obstacles ahead,” the report said.

“Visibility sparks belief, but without tackling the structural and cultural barriers around safety, belonging and opportunity, many girls still don’t feel able to step into new spaces or feel that the pathways ahead are truly possible.”

I reckon there’s another factor at play, too. I know sport isn’t always fun. You get dropped from teams and lose matches. Sometimes you embarrass yourself, like when I got a ball to my face in a netball match simply because I didn’t catch it properly.

The difference today is that people seem quicker to walk away from things that make them uncomfortable or become too hard, like jobs or relationships.

Perhaps that’s where today’s “soft life” movement collides with the reality of becoming successful.

The irony is that many of the qualities parents say they want their children to develop are learned through sport.

Resilience. Discipline. Confidence.

You don’t learn those things when everything goes your way, or you get a participation trophy just for turning up. You learn those qualities after losing a match or training in the rain in the middle of winter.

Obviously, we need to look after our mental health and set boundaries on a few different things. But don’t we also need to teach our kids that the best things in life are often hard to achieve without commitment, hard work and resilience?

Nobody wins a gold medal or captains the mighty Matildas without making sacrifices along the way.