At peace on the pitch

Soccer is where Anne Millard goes to find peace and calm – a contradiction for a player who knows how to make things happen on a soccer pitch.

An honor student with a 4.0 grade-point average, Millard is good at the game and has a host of accomplishments to her credit in the sport. The University High senior midfielder, a premier-level player, is a four-year starter for the Titans and already has orally committed to play Division I college soccer for the University Idaho next year.

Wednesday night, in the Greater Spokane League opener for both teams, Millard scored on a penalty kick in the final minute of regulation time to force overtime with Central Valley. The Titans won the game 3-2 in a shootout.

“I love playing soccer and between club and school, I pretty much play year around,” she said. “When I’m playing soccer and I can totally concentrate on playing my game, everything else just sort of goes away.”

For Millard, the “everything else” can be pretty intrusive. Millard has Tourette’s syndrome, an inherited neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by multiple physical tics and at least one verbal tic. Dealing with the assorted tics is a challenge and medication helps.

Often, she said, she can suppress the tics until she can find a better time and place.

But playing soccer is different.

“I don’t tic when I play,” Millard said. “When you’re totally concentrated on what you’re doing, you don’t tic.”

That’s a relief, she said.

Millard is by no means the first soccer player to deal with Tourette’s syndrome. David Beckham, perhaps the most famous soccer player in the world, has the disorder. So does Tim Howard, the standout goalkeeper for the United States national team at the 2010 World Cup. Comedian Dan Aykroyd had the disorder when he was younger and historians speculate that composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, too, had Tourette’s.

To be diagnosed with the syndrome, a patient must have at least two physical tics and one verbal tic. The type and severity of the tics can wax and wane over time. In some people, physical tics can take the form of anything from flapping arms to somersaults.

One of Millard’s physical tics is an abdominal contraction that involves her whole body and can be exhausting.

“On the other hand, I do have a six-pack,” she laughed, referring to her washboard stomach. “But it can get difficult because it’s more than just doing an abdominal crunch. It’s a full-body contraction that wears you out. If you’ve ever done too many crunches, you get an idea of what it’s about.

“Being on a medication that works helps a ton. I try to go off the medication every six months or so, just to get an idea of whether or not I can deal with the tics on my own. They get dramatically worse when I do.

“And I’ve noticed that they get worse in the spring and the fall and less severe in the winter and summer.”

Millard finally was diagnosed as a freshman.

“It’s kind of a process of elimination,” she explained. “They have to test you for everything else and if that all comes back negative, it’s Tourette’s. I was tested for epilepsy. I was tested for a brain tumor.”

It helped to have a teammate who also deals with the disorder.

“I talked to her and her sister, who also has it, all the time,” Millard said. “It helped to have someone who has it to talk to.”

Medicating Tourette’s is a trial-and-error. There are no drugs developed specifically for the disorder, she explained. Virtually all were developed for other uses, but showed some effectiveness with Tourette’s as a side effect.

“To be honest, the first drug we tried was the over-the-counter antihistamine Zyrtec,” Millard said. “It didn’t help me, but it does help some people. I tried the medication that works for my teammate. It works wonderfully for them, but didn’t help me. In all, we tried seven different medications before we found something that helped.”

What worked was an antidepressant.

“The side effect for me is that I’m happy,” she laughed. “I’m a pretty happy person to begin with and I don’t get depressed. But if that’s as bad as it gets, I’m pretty lucky.”

Millard is exceptionally open about the disorder. She’s a student ambassador for the Tourette’s Syndrome Association and she’s turned that position into her senior project.

“I’ve talked to a couple middle schools and an elementary school class,” she said. “I talk to them about how to deal with someone who has Tourette’s. I want to help people understand what Tourette’s really is. It’s not as big of a deal as people think it is.”

After speaking to a class at North Pines Middle School, the principal asked her to come back to speak to his staff.

“He told his wife about me,” Millard said. “She works at Central Valley and they asked me to come speak to the staff there, too.”

Tourette’s syndrome has been used a punch line on television programs like “South Park,” and Millard is eager to clear up a few of the popular misconceptions that arise from such portrayals.

“Some of the things they portray about Tourette’s are pretty uncommon,” she said. “The verbal tic of cussing and saying inappropriate things is very uncommon.

“I think some people are under the impression that we have these tics as a way of drawing attention to ourselves, or that we’re mocking someone, and that’s not true either.”

Millard’s advice for dealing with a person with Tourette’s is simple: ignore the tics if you can.

“I know for me, personally, I would prefer that people just ignore it,” she said. “And, honestly, I would prefer it if they just asked me about it rather than think I’m crazy or something.”

Tourette’s can simply go away over time. Millard hopes that will be the case.

“I hope so,” she said. “That’s why I keep checking myself by going off my meds every so often.

“It would be nice to just be happy all on my own and not extra happy because of my medication.”