There comes a time in every athlete’s life when you need to think about what comes next.
The body breaks down, injuries accumulate, and retirement looms, likely in your early thirties. Some players don’t even make it that far.
For Jeff Parke, it happened at age 33, and it happened suddenly. The former Philadelphia Union center back was traded to D.C. United in 2014 and played 14 games before he was forced to give it up.
"To be honest man, when I got injured, it happened so fast, so I didn’t really have the opportunity to think about it, it was basically on the fly," Parke recently told The Philly Soccer Page.