‘I have so much regret,’ N.M. soccer player says

Opposing fans were mockingly chanting her name, she said, and players on both teams were playing aggressively. She said she was called names and taken down to the ground with cheap shots. On video, a BYU player can be seen elbowing Lambert in the stomach before she shoves the opponent in the back in retaliation. Shumway can be seen tugging on Lambert’s shorts before she is yanked down by her ponytail.

If the referee Joe Pimentel had issued more yellow cards or a red card, Lambert said, “It would have been a very different game.”

Still, Lambert said that she did not want to throw Pimentel “under the bus” and that she did not consider the game to be out of control.

Her coach, Kit Vela, never instructed her to “take anybody out,” Lambert said, adding that the BYU players also did not appear to have malign intent.

Lambert said she eventually grew frustrated, as much with herself as with the opponent, saying she had often struggled with self-confidence and with feeling “that I’m accepted playing at this level.”

Lambert said of the match: “I’ve never been in a situation like that, where I was out of my element. There were times in the game where I was literally like, ‘All right, Elizabeth, you’ve got to get control of yourself.’ ”

In each of her two previous matches, Lambert had received a yellow-card warning, but those were the only cautions in more than 2,500 minutes of play at New Mexico, a university official said.

Lambert said she did not consider herself a dirty player. Yet in the second half, she yanked Shumway down by her ponytail and assumed widespread villainy.

“In that one moment, I let it all get into my head,” Lambert said of the emotion of the game.

Later in the match, Lambert received a yellow card for tripping.

She is seeing a clinical psychologist on campus to better understand what caused the hair-pulling incident. It is one of several steps she is taking, along with speaking to youth players about acceptable behavior, so she can seek reinstatement to the team in the spring.

“I’m working on my mental game to never let that happen again,” Lambert said. “That’s unacceptable in any sport to get to that point where you feel it’s necessary that you have to retaliate in a dirty manner.”

This article, “Those Soccer Plays, in Context,” first appeared in The New York Times.