OLD LYME — Vivian Boller was a freshman already playing regularly for the Lyme-Old Lyme girls soccer team when she brought a request to her coach.
“She was playing outside midfield and she wasn’t taking any throw-ins,” coach Caroline Wallace said. “And she came up and said, ‘Caroline, I want to take the throw-ins,’ and I was like, ‘Go for it.'”
It may seem like a simple request from a young soccer player, but there was a little more to it. Boller was born without a left arm, and in soccer, throw-ins are done with both hands on the ball.
“I have a vague memory of it,” Boller said, “but it’s still in the back of my mind. Playing for my (youth) team, I remember going up for a throw-in because my coach really liked to play quick, once the ball goes out, you grab it and play it immediately. I went to grab it and the other coach said something along the lines of, ‘She can’t do that. That’s not legal.'”
No one, though, can tell Vivian Boller, now a junior, she can’t do something and expect it to stick. It hasn’t been an issue in high school, where Boller now plays center midfield with a traditionally powerful girls soccer program. She also plays guard for the basketball team and competes in sprints and jumps for the two-time state champion girls track team.
“(Throw-ins) are just another example of how she doesn’t let anything stop her,” Wallace said.
Boller, who is about 4 feet 11, has three goals and five assists for the Wildcats, including a goal and three assists in two recent victories over North Branford and Valley Regional of Deep River. Old Lyme is 7-6-1 and surging at the right time with the conference and state tournaments looming.
“She’s my favorite player to play with,” said Anna Bussman, who has scored three goals in each of Old Lyme’s four straight wins. “She’s the type of person; she’s going to make something happen. I’ve been her soccer sister for three years, so I’ve gotten close with her and she is just full of energy and she just brings that and motivates other people. I’ve never seen her down on herself.”
Long journey to Old Lyme
Boller was born in Taiwan, lived in an orphanage there until age 3. The Bollers, with two older sons, adopted Vivian and, with her father in the Navy, they lived in places like South Korea and Sicily, where she first learned to play soccer, before settling on the Connecticut shoreline.
“In Sicily, we lived on a base and I went to a school with military kids,” she said.
“I played in a youth league in Sicily, but I was super uncompetitive, didn’t have many thoughts about it. Then when we moved to the United States, I joined the Lyme-Old Lyme Soccer Club and that’s when I realized I wanted to keep playing,” she said. “I had a passion for it. I realized it was something I wanted to keep doing in my life, so me and my dad started looking for clubs.”
In eighth grade, Boller joined the Connecticut Rush club program and her game began to take off. Her soccer IQ, speed, ball skills and effectiveness in leadership are all readily apparent in watching her play for the Wildcats now. “Great ball, Viv!” is frequently heard from her coaches, Wallace and Mya Johnson, both stars on four Old Lyme state championship teams only a few years ago.
The center midfield position is close to being a quarterback on the soccer pitch, putting Boller literally and figuratively in the middle of the action.
“She’s the type of player everyone wants on their team,” Wallace said, “from her skill and her drive to her leadership. She leave it all out there. She’s a tiny girl, but what I admire most about Viv is that absolutely nothing holds her back. Nothing is a disadvantage to her. She will find a way to make a disadvantage into her own advantage.”
In addition to her three sports, Boller has been known to swing a golf club, too. And she loves to bake, bringing S’mores and other treats in for her teammates. Soccer is the sport she hopes to continue in college, and over this past summer she spent time at a soccer academy in Spain to further develop her skills.
“I do want to go to college for soccer, that is my main goal,” Boller said. “I have been going to camps, contacting, getting film, it’s a hard process and it’s super competitive.”
The harder the better
Hard things, super-competitive things, are what Boller does, and she always finds a way.
“In middle school, because I had coach (Tim) Gavin, he believed in me and it brought out my confidence and it made me want to work even harder to get even better,” Boller said. “Even in club soccer, I wasn’t the best player but I knew I could definitely keep up and hold my own with the players who were better than me. … There were some voices in the back of my head, that there are some things you can’t do, especially in basketball. … I may not have two hands to dribble, but being able to be be a main defender, work hard on defense, is my strength.
“There are things I am not going to be able to do that people with two hands may be able to do. In soccer, I can’t necessarily do throw-ins, but my coaches and my teammates have always been very supportive and have never looked at me differently and I appreciate them for that.”
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On a good day, such as the recent games, Boller makes her share of assists, or begins the possessions that result in breakaways and goals. If she has a bad day, Boller’s routine is to “push it back to the back of my brain until the game is over,” and then “let it all out.”
“I work even harder to prove myself to myself,” she said. “Then after the game I debrief, and think about those plays that I could have done better. And then I forget about it, it’s a new day.”
Others athletes have shown that amazing things can be done with an upper limb difference, where the spirit and will to do them is indomitable. Long-time major league pitcher Jim Abbott learned to throw and handle a glove to win 87 games, including a no-hitter. Carson Pickett played four years of college women’s soccer, helping Florida State win a national championship, and has been playing professionally since 2016.
“I have my role models right here in Old Lyme, both my coaches are role models,” Boller said. “I’ve seen so many clips of them playing at Old Lyme, winning four state championships in a row, and I love having them as my coaches. Anna Bussman, I see her as my role model also. She is just super inspiring. … I hope, especially with kids with — I don’t want to say disabilities, but something unique about them — I want them to think when they see me play that nothing should hold you back.
“You always have to find the light in the dark, because although you may have a disadvantage, you can always find a way to give yourself an advantage or shock your opponent with something they may not realize you can do.”