They Met as College Athletes. After He Was Drafted Into the NFL, She Grappled with Not Going Pro (Exclusive)

NEED TO KNOW

• Maddie Stoll met her now husband Chris Stoll when the pair were both athletes at Penn State –she a soccer player and he on the football team
• After graduation, the two did long distance while Chris was draft prepping and Maddie was starting her first job
• With the Super Bowl fast approaching, and Chris making his first appearance as the long snapper for the Seattle Seahawks, Maddie tells PEOPLE about what it was like to watch her husband continue his pro career — having previously played at such a high level herself
  

Maddie Stoll met her now-husband Chris Stoll in the athlete academic center at Pennsylvania State University during their required study hours.

Penn State's main campus boasts nearly 46,000 undergraduate students, but according to Maddie, only about 800 athletes.

"You just kind of migrate towards the people that are doing the same thing as on the same schedule as you," she tells PEOPLE, of meeting Chris.

Maddie calls Chris a "friend of our team" (she played women's soccer for the school), sharing how the sports teams at Penn State would "intermingle."

"Over the years, we were just going to a lot of the same events and a lot of the same parties and in the same circles," she shares. "And then ultimately it became a little more as we kept going."

Growing up, and into college, the Grand Rapids, Mich. native's soccer career began to explode. She had played sports her entire life. Her dad was a college football player who eventually became a coach for high school and youth sports. Her mom was a gymnast-turned-cheerleader. She grew up playing everything from soccer to basketball to softball —  "just whatever my parents could really put me in," she says.

Soccer eventually stood out the most to Maddie, and in 8th grade, she decided that she wanted to play competitively.

"My parents would drive me along with some other kids, two hours to Detroit on weeknights all the time so that I could pursue my soccer career. I owe them the world. They were so committed. I was so committed. But I would say that's when soccer really took off," she explains.

She played across the state with the Michigan Hawks soccer club, within the Elite Clubs National League, and won two national championships. Maddie loved getting to play with her friends, dedicating her time to her sport with girls who had a similar appreciation for the game.

"That's what makes sports so amazing, is not only competing for yourself, but competing for these other girls and women that you love," she says.

Maddie then went to Penn State, where she played soccer for five years, calling the experience "unique and wonderful."

"I had friends that I made my freshman year, but also just through all my years that were in my wedding, I was in their wedding — lifelong friends who I love dearly," she shares.

She was a captain in her last year, winning Big 10 championships over the course of her time at Penn State. "We never won the national championship, which is something that I am still angry about," she jokes. "But it was wonderful and magical, and we worked so hard and I loved it."

Maddie graduated from Penn State in December of 2021, flew home to Michigan for the holidays, and then flew to Oregon to start her first job in the first week of January, after receiving a return offer from a previous internship.

Chris stayed behind, draft prepping, and was ultimately signed by the Seahawks as an undrafted free agent. Washington and Oregon suddenly brought the couple much closer.

"I was like, 'Oh my goodness. This is the best case scenario I could ever have prayed for in my life."

However, Maddie didn't move to Seattle until nearly three years later, in April 2025, just a few years before the couple ultimately got married.

"I was committed to my career," she explains. "And so we did long dance for two and a half years." Long distance, and managing their relationship amid great personal changes, was challenging, Maddie divulges.

"I am going to preface by saying it worked out and I love him deeply, but I don't think it was always rainbows and butterflies," she says.

Part of the challenge for Maddie was coming off of the environment of college sports, "where everything is time managed, and this is what you're going to do now and you're going to go eat this meal, and then you're going to show up to this meeting," she says, and moving into a "world where you have responsibility in your career, but you also have autonomy and choice."

Maddie went through an "unbelievable identity crisis," telling PEOPLE that she had fought a "long internal battle" about whether or not to continue on to play soccer professionally.

"Your whole life has been linked to putting energy and time into not only your sport, but the people that go with it. Your connection to your friends, to your coaches, to your parents, to your siblings is all through this thing that was all-consuming in your life," she shares.

Adding to the pressure was Chris's choice to continue the pursuit of playing his sport at the highest level.

"And so I'm grappling with like, 'Oh my God, I didn't choose to do this route, but I'm so proud of you to do this route for yourself.'"

"I fought it after I made my choice, too," Maddie says, of ultimately deciding to accept her job offer. "I think I am someone whom I had committed to, and my parents are wonderful, but they taught us to honor our word. And so I think I stuck with that."

What never faltered during this time of immense personal turmoil was the pair's commitment to each other. Even amid joining the Seahawks and moving to new cities, and now, ahead of Chris's first appearance in the Super Bowl, the two lean on each other.

"He's a huge grounding point for me," Maddie says. "He's the calmest person."

"We're blessed with unbelievable friends, unbelievable family members that just keep us in what we know, what we stand for, where our faith lies, because we're in such a unique situation," she adds.

The situation has recently become even more unique. On Feb. 8, Chris will make his first-ever Super Bowl appearance as the Seattle Seahawks face off against the New England Patriots.

"I think I'm more nervous," Maddie laughs.

"He's so grounded, and so this is just another football game," she says. "He's like, 'I'm going to do the same thing that I've done for my whole life for all these years.'"

"I just want it so badly for him," she continues. "I've said this to my family members, but running onto the field to meet him after the NFC Championship, I've never been happier for another singular human being in my life."

Maddie says she hopes that everyone gets a chance to feel something like that for somebody else.

"Going into this one, I just want him so badly to feel it again. And he would be the best. You would have been the best team, the best in the whole country, in the world technically, because it's not like football."

Maddie knows the emotion — what it feels like to train your whole life to "be the best and reach the pinnacle of sport." Though she knows there was more beyond her college career, like professional soccer and the National League, Maddie says she has friends "that play abroad, have won gold medals."

They're the best at their sport, and this will be the equivalent for him," she shares. "And I think that's so awesome. And that's driving me to be like, 'Oh my God, you can do it.'"

Read the original article on People