In contrast to older sister Christen, who recalled recently that she spent her first soccer season picking flowers instead of kicking the ball, Channing Press couldn't wait to get on the field.

Really, she couldn't wait.

Her parents tell her that she was so excited to finally play in her first real soccer game at about 4 years old that she took off at full sprint well before any whistle ever blew. In her mind, perhaps, she had bided her time as a spectator long enough. By three years the youngest of sisters, Tyler oldest and Christen in the middle, Channing sought to follow in their footsteps.

It is hardly new, as these stories go, to learn she eventually needed to find her own path separate from their accomplishments.

Who followed her when she took that fork is something of a plot twist.

In confronting her own depression, finding peace of mind through the practice and study of Vedic meditation, Channing discovered a world awaiting her that offered pleasures and passions beyond soccer.

And while meditation helped Channing reach a place where she was at peace with walking away from soccer, it might well have kept Christen from doing the same.

"I feel like in the most important part of my life, which is my soccer, football, my career, she has really protected me," said Christen, the United States forward who has chased a soccer ball across the globe, including a World Cup title a year ago and now in her first Olympics. "And she has really taught me how to build an army to protect myself. And I feel like I could withstand anything."

Channing withstood a lot in her own right. She loved the game as much as any of the sisters, the three of them daughters of a dad who imbued in them the competitiveness he carried as a former college football player. While they chased achievement in everything -- the three ended up going to Harvard (Tyler), Stanford (Christen) and Villanova (Channing) -- soccer stood apart. Yet as Channing neared her teenage years and soccer grew ever more serious, the game started to take a toll. She threw up before almost any competition, anxiety swelling inside her. She couldn't control it. By the time she played for Villanova in college, anxiety morphed into full-on panic attacks.

She spiraled into a year-long depression. She felt trapped, unable to live up to expectations -- her own and those of all the people who told her how good she was from an early age -- when it came to this central pillar of her life that the sport had become. Yet its place as a central pillar made it that much more difficult to deconstruct, lest everything come tumbling down around it.