My water was a guess

October 21, 2022. USF away at SMU. I was starting. Partway through the match I felt a sharp pain in my groin and had to come off. A small tear, and an injury I'd never had before.

I rehabbed it for six months and got cleared in April.

The next season I came back after a hard preseason. I felt good and I was playing real minutes. About three games in, the pain started again, and I shut it down before it turned into the same year twice.

I sat down with our athletic trainers to work out why it kept happening. Part of the answer was dehydration. It wasn't one bad day. My muscles had been running low for months, and I had no idea.

So I went looking for a way to track what I was actually drinking. What I found was a urine colour chart taped inside a bathroom stall and a coach telling the whole squad to drink more water.

Every one of those is either a model or a memory.

My sprint distance was tracked to the metre. My sleep to the minute. My water was a guess.

Rima and I started working on that in 2024. She was our team's student manager, so she'd seen the same problem from the sideline. Nicolas, my captain before me and my roommate for four years, came home to join us full time this September.

The idea is simple. One millilitre of water weighs one gram. Weigh a bottle every time it's set down, and the difference is what someone drank.

Building it has been less simple. That is what I will write about here.