After well-traveled professional career, Highland grad Madison Less is hanging up her keeper's gloves

Madison Less played four years of soccer at Highland High School, four more at the University of Cincinnati and a season each professionally in Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Israel and Turkey. Now 26 years old and living in Cincinnati, she recently turned down an opportunity to continue her goalkeeping career in France and — for the first time in her life — is busy applying for jobs, filling out resumes and writing cover letters in search of an accounting position. "It will be an adjustment, that's for sure," said Less, who took advantage of a redshirt freshman season to earn her master's in business administration in her fifth year at Cincinnati. "It will be one extreme to the other with the profession I'm going into. It will be difficult and challenging, but it's something new, which will be nice." The 5-foot-9 Less, who did not work while playing soccer in high school or college due to club team commitments, earned approximately $1,500 a month while playing professionally. She didn't strike it rich monetarily, but playing soccer in four foreign countries and visiting a number of others provided her with thousands of memories. Less dined on horse in Kazakhstan — "It's a gamier beef," she said — rode a camel in Lithuania, lived on the beach in Israel and resided in Istanbul, which has a population of more than 15 million, while in Turkey. "Now I'm doing something new: (I'm) trying to find a job," she said with a laugh. "I did some random volunteering and went on a couple mission trips to help run soccer clinics, but soccer is basically my resume." After earning four letters in soccer and three in basketball prior to graduating from Highland in 2016, Less accepted a scholarship to play soccer at Cincinnati. She redshirted as a freshman, had three solid seasons and then hurt her wrist early in her fifth year. That 2020-21 season was pushed from the fall to the spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the injured Less still wanted to be part of the team, so she functioned as a student coach. Her Ambassadors Football club coach throughout high school and college, Caleb Fortune, helped her compile a highlight video and hooked her up with A&V Sports agents Alan Naigeon and Takumi Jeannin, which led to Less going to Kazakhstan in June 2021. "It was my first contract, so I didn't know much," she said. "We had a lot of other foreigners on the team, which helped my transition. They were very helpful and showed me the ropes of living there and all that stuff. We lived in what they called a hotel, but it's not what we'd call a hotel. It was a building where we slept and ate all our meals." In Kazakhstan, which is south of Russia and west of China, Less lived in Shymkent, which has a population of 1 million. "I was making $1,500 a month, but that goes a long way because everything is very, very cheap," she said. "The level of the league wasn't super high, but the club I was on was at a pretty high level. Most of the local girls were on the national team and we had a really good group of foreigners from Africa and the U.S., so we had a good squad." The team ended up qualifying for the Champions League, which afforded Less the opportunity to try more traditional dishes than horse. "Some ladies cooked for us every day," she said. "We had a lot of rice, chicken, meat and potatoes, basically. " When her season in Kazakhstan ended in November 2021, her coach, Bulgarian Kaloyen Petkov, took a job in Lithuania, so she joined him there from February to September 2022. She lived in a town called Sauliai, whose population of 108,000 makes it the fourth-largest city in the country. "It was a smaller city, but we had a cute little square that had everything we needed, like coffee shops and restaurants," Less said. "I lived in a house with some of the girls from the U.S. and Canada, so it was nice." During a two-week break in the season, Less and her teammates were able to leave Sauliai, which is located in the northern part of Lithuania, and explore different parts of the country. After her Lithuanian team finished its season in the Champions League, Less went directly to Israel, where she stayed from September 2022 until May 2023. She lived in Giv'at Olga, a small suburb of Hadera, which is located just north of Tel Aviv. "We went to Tel Aviv a decent amount, but where we lived was the opposite of that," she said. "It was a small town and more religious. We lived right on the beach, so we went every day. They have really nice weather there, especially compared to Lithuania." Unable to be with parents Ron and Lorie and younger brothers Hunter and Luke at Christmas, Less visited Nazareth on Christmas Eve. Overall, her stay in Israel was extremely enjoyable. "The league there was way more competitive," she said. "Any team could win any game, which was really fun, and they were super welcoming people. It's a different culture everywhere, but that's something they really seem to pride themselves on." After a brief trip back to the U.S., Less played in Turkey from July 2023 to May 2024, though she came home for 10 days to surprise her family at Christmas. While in Turkey, Less lived in the Balat section of Istanbul. "Istanbul is a huge, huge, huge city," she said. "It's 20 cities in one. The area I was in was historic, older, conservative. Across the bridge and water, there were high-end, wealthy places. I loved the city. There were never-ending things to do and it is really pretty." After returning to Ohio about two months ago, Less made the difficult decision that it was time to give up professional soccer. "I decided a few weeks ago that it was time to start something new, be home, live a different lifestyle," she said. "It was a big mix of everything, not one thing specifically. My body is slowly falling apart and I wanted to be closer to home. "That (soccer) lifestyle is difficult after a while, so it was a mix of factors. Money was definitely on my pro list (of quitting soccer) when I was deciding. Plus, I just had a gut feeling that it was time." Currently dealing with a few herniated disks, Less knows she will miss the adrenaline rush she got from playing pro soccer, but she's unsure how much. "That's the million-dollar question," she said. "For sure, I'm going to miss that. You can't replace that. You can try with other things competitively, but you can only get close to it. That's just part of it." The best part of it, of course, is all the life experiences Less was able to compile thanks to soccer. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing for all of it," she said. "Just meeting new people from the U.S., from other countries all around the world, experiencing different cultures and immersing yourself in that while doing what you loved to do, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on X.