Nothing Left to Prove: DiDi Haračić's Remarkable Journey to Angel City (Part 2)

This article is the second in a three-part series. You can read part one here.

In 2018, the Bosnian federation contacted DiDi. World Cup qualifiers were coming up, and they needed a keeper.

Anica didn’t want her to go.

People in Bosnia knew the name Haračić, she explains. In addition to being an elite athlete, Izet had been high up in the Bosnian military. As part of his job with the Special Forces, he served in a security detail for President Alija Izetbegović; it wasn’t uncommon for him to show up in the background of photos and newscasts.

“Many things, he didn’t really tell me,” says Anica. “I wasn’t allowed to know everything. Even if something happened, I don't know where he's going unless it's in the news.”

Growing up, DiDi had given little thought to the war her parents had escaped. “I don’t think we ever talked about it,” she says. “I think they wanted nothing to do with Bosnia anymore.”

The conflict in the former Yugoslavia was so painful not just because of the brutality of the war itself, but because it divided what had been a multicultural society along ethnic and religious lines. That division rose to the level of ethnic cleansing in some areas. “Bosnia and Herzegovina was 60% mixed marriages before the war,” says Anica. As the conflict began to brew, she remembers, “Some people would not talk to you because of your name.”

Anica and Izet were a mixed marriage themselves, and having seen firsthand what sectarianism and intolerance can do, they had chosen to raise their children with no religious affiliation.

“I remember her actually telling me she wanted me to play for Serbia or Croatia—I think more Croatia,” says DiDi. “I told her, ‘I don't want to play for either of those countries. That's not where I was born.’”

“There's a challenge with playing with Bosnia,” she adds. “We're not a well-known country. We're small. So I'm like, ‘how can I make an impact for a small country?’”

It was the first time she’d been back to the country she’d left when she was a newborn. “I went a day early so I could have some time with family,” she remembers. “My aunt broke down crying when she picked me up. It was the first time she’d seen me in 24 years.”

Together, they went to the basement where Anica had hidden with her and Anja. “There were rocks everywhere,” DiDi remembers. “I don't understand how that building is still standing. But my aunt was like, ‘This is the little corner where we hid from the soldiers.’ My grandma described bombs lighting up the hill outside her kitchen window.”

“You don’t think about this stuff,” she says. “It’s not something [people] should have to think about.”

Anica’s fears proved unfounded. The trip wasn’t without its challenges—DiDi didn’t know a soul on the team—but being a Bosnian speaker helped. On that first trip, she played one game, a 3–0 loss to Russia; she’s played nine more since then.

“My first game, when the anthem came on, I started crying,” she remembers. “Because I'm proud to be a Bosnian. I'm proud of my culture and where I was born and where my roots are.

“But also, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my parents.”

When Izet reached Anica in Germany—which he did, somehow, with a two-way radio, because the phone lines in Bosnia had been cut—he told her, “‘Anica, I have a chance to go to Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway’” she remembers. Izet had been named to the four-man bobsled team. It was an unbelievable stroke of luck: men, especially soldiers, weren’t allowed to leave the country. The military was reluctant even to let the nine members of the Olympic team go to Norway, but ultimately allowed it.

Training for the Olympics in a warzone presents difficulties. Izet and his teammates rarely had enough food, often subsisting on bread and tea; one of them later joked that the best part of the games was the dining hall. The team had done a lot of their preparation inside a bombed-out building, doing sprints in a hallway and lifting in a makeshift weight room. Ironically, there was an Olympic bobsled track on the edge of the city that had been built for the 1984 games, but using it, obviously, was unthinkable.

After Lillehammer, Izet got another lucky break. A woman in Washington, DC named Sue Osterberg heard on the broadcast that after the games, the Bosnian team would likely go to a refugee camp, and convinced a group at American University to sponsor the six men for a six-month visit to the US. While in DC, Izet was able to find legal help toward getting asylum for himself and the family.

“I said, ‘Sign me up,’” remembers Anica. “‘Let's go. We can't go back.’”

The family moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Arlington, Virginia that cost $500 a month. Izet found work, first as a dishwasher at a restaurant, and then as landscaper at Burning Tree, an ultra-exclusive country club. Anica remembers that he made about $16,000 per year; she couldn’t work herself because she didn’t speak any English.

“We didn't have a car, so he had to get up at 4:30 or 5:00, whatever time Metro starts,” she says, “and go to Bethesda, and then take a bus to get to Burning Tree Club.”

The kids had their own challenges. When DiDi started school, she spoke only Bosnian. “I was one of those kids who would get pulled out of class into a small group [to learn English],” she says. “I always tried to talk to other kids, but I was speaking Bosnian, so I didn't have very many friends.”

Anica learned English alongside her daughters and by watching TV, and eventually found work herself at a Roy Rogers. “My husband would work at Burning Tree Club, and then after work, he would go do landscaping for another company,” says Anica. “So he worked two jobs, and then when he came home, I’d go to work.”

Much like Anja’s recollections of her time in Germany, despite the hardships, DiDi has happy memories of those years. “I was joking with my mom a few months ago, ‘You remember those good old days? How on Friday nights we'd have fried chicken from Roy Rogers?’” she says. “She was like, ‘Sweetheart, those weren't good old days. That was because my manager knew the situation we were in and she would let us bring back home that 12-piece fried chicken.’

“Well, that mashed potato and gravy was the best time of my life!” she laughs.

When Anica talks about the family’s escape from Bosnia and their early years in Virginia, a theme emerges—an immense gratitude for everyone who made it possible for them to move to this country and survive here.

There was her manager at Roy Rogers, and later her manager at JC Penney. There was Izet’s manager at the golf club. Before that, there was a woman in Germany who gave her a job. Then there’s Osterberg, who spent months working to bring a group of men she’d never met to safety. There’s also Anton and Lydia, a Croatian couple Anica met at a grocery store when Anton overheard DiDi asking for a chocolate bar in Bosnian, and who helped them learn to navigate life in America.

“I met so many good people here,” she says.

A young Haračić in goal.

Haračić started soccer when she was five. According to DiDi, her mom signed her up because she had too much energy. “I was just bouncing off the walls,” she remembers.

Her first club was a co-ed team that practiced at a nearby school. It wasn’t long before the coach took notice of her talent and invited her to join a travel team.

“We didn't know what to do,” remembers Anica. “It was going to be more expensive. But we decided to pick up extra jobs just to put her in sports and whatever her dream was.” Just like the garlic soup and the 12-piece fried chicken, she and Izet never told DiDi where that money came from.

Even at a young age, Haračić was a serious competitor. “Kids would be like, on the sidelines, picking flowers, and Dee’s just sweating bullets,” says Anja. “Running up and down the field, playing goalie, playing midfielder, doing everything.”

She wound up in goal the same way a lot of kids do: one day the team needed a goalie, so the coach put her there. “She saved everything,” Anica remembers.

By age 15, Haračić was a full-time keeper. At first, she says, she got the job because she was the only kid who was willing to throw herself to the ground, but she soon realized she had a knack for it. 

“There's this structure, there's this control that I have,” she says now. A goalkeeper’s job isn’t just making saves—what’s arguably more important is their role positioning their defenders. “I can see everything, and I enjoy that.” 

“But,” she adds, “I also enjoy the pressure.”

By high school, Haračić was attracting attention from college recruiters. College ball had long been in Haračić’s plans, but Anica and Izet knew little about the landscape. “Maybe in high school people started talking about college and scholarships and stuff,” says Anica. “We didn’t know anything. In our mind there was NOVA [Northern Virginia Community College] and George Mason. That's it. I didn't even think to go anywhere else.”

But the coaches came calling, among them Katherine Vettori at Loyola, who had previously coached for a club that played against Haračić’s. “She said, ‘we were always sweating when they tell us DiDi is in goal for the other team,’” says Anica. “And she did everything for her to come to Loyola.”

Becoming a starter her sophomore season, Haračić was to graduate with Loyola’s all-time career saves record, with 315 in 64 games played. In 2012, she was named goalkeeper of the year for the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

Anica insisted DiDi finish school before joining the Flash, who signed her in May, 2014. She missed graduation, but the next time she was home, her mom staged a ceremony in the backyard just for her. “I waited four years for a picture with the gown!” she says. “You're first in our family with that gown.”

While DiDi was in college, Izet had been diagnosed with cancer. She would be right in the middle of her long, grinding journey toward becoming a professional when he passed away.

Continue to Part 3 here.