By Michael Preston

This week’s IFAF European Flag Football Championships mark a significant milestone in the life of Marta Mathews. Four years ago, the wide receiver was the tournament MVP as Great Britain claimed the silver medal.

That was before the pandemic prevented the Lions from seeing how their continental success translated against the best the world had to offer on a global stage. It was before a hyper extended knee, a dislocated finger and neck and back injuries. It was before Marta was diagnosed with thyroid cancer last year.

“And then I crashed my car to top it off,” she laughs, reflecting on a challenging period in her life that would have most people recoiling rather than chasing dreams. “As much as all of that stuff has happened, how I’m doing in my athletic well-being and my performance and my business that I run, when I look at it, it’s pretty phenomenal.”

Now Marta has set herself three goals, the first of which is to compete for glory in Limerick. The others are to back flip 30 meters or 100 feet, which would be the highest female cliff jump flip of this century perhaps ever, before the age of 31, so by next year. She leaps off bridges, quarries, cliffs; anything that’s above water. Her third goal is to double the size of an already successful business, which offers private tutoring for students taking SATs, GCSEs and A levels, providing maths, English and science support.

“With what I do in my life, I’ve basically never had a period of time to recover,” explains the career athlete who won a prestigious American national college soccer championship with Florida State in 2014 and played the sport professionally in England with the Doncaster Belles. “This year has consisted of surgery, another surgery, sickness, injury, injury, sickness, injury!

“When I enter a tournament, I’m just about capable of maybe not breaking myself, which I tend to do. For me it’s about getting through the Euros and then bringing myself up to being an elite level athlete so that I can do anything at any time and go to any tournament and perform. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be able to perform in Ireland, it’s just that I might take it easy at times and then ramp it up as we go along.”

Battling cancer naturally presented a mental and physical obstacle, which Marta has challenged head on. Her training and conditioning as an elite athlete in the United States, combining the demands of playing and winning at a Division I sport with gaining a degree, proved to be a solid if unintentional grounding.

“I did a physics degree at the same time, so certainly didn’t have it easy,” she explains. “I embarked on a journey that was intense and taught me a lot; consistency and being able to perform on the field regularly. It was immense because we were top four every year and were ACC champs three years in a row, so it was non-stop. Packaging a physics degree on top of that was a really demanding.

“I don’t know what part of the illness has changed me, but my mum says that my mentality has changed for sure. If I was chilled before, I’m one hundred times more so now. Right now, I’m just happy that I’m healthy and that I can jog. Before, if I wasn’t one hundred percent healthy all the time it was like I had an issue. If I can just exercise, I’m ecstatic.”

The good news for the Great Britain women’s team, and those who rewarded Marta’s performances at the last Euros, is that her cliff jumping exploits are on the back burner until after the tournament in Ireland. Right now, her focus is on performing Limerick, staying healthy, and knowing when to shift up into top gear.

“People say I wake up on the final day,” she says. “I’ve performed at a high-pressure level. I used to take penalties for LSU in the biggest games, so dealing with pressure is very natural to me.

“I find that as humans we each only have a certain amount of energy whether that’s physical or emotional, and if we decide to expend it on things that do not bring value to our lives, it’s only going to be us that suffer. I’m in charge of myself, my performance my emotions and I bring that to the team in ways that I can as a person. I want to be the best version of myself I can be.”

Marta and Great Britain return to competitive international action on Friday at 11am against France on the tournament’s main field.