“It was a big blow,” David Vermillion said. “He spent all of his life climbing that hill, moving up, making himself a good player, and to abruptly have it end was tough.”
Scott Vermillion tried to find some footing in his life after soccer. He managed a family store. He coached local youth teams. He pursued a nursing degree. But his relationships were slowly unraveling.
Though Vermillion’s behavior would grow most concerning in the decade before his death, Jones said she noticed changes in him even before his career was over: He was often lethargic, which struck her as odd for a professional athlete, and frequently complained of headaches.
“When I met Scott, he was a vibrant, outgoing pro athlete, super fun, a jokester,” said Jones, who divorced Vermillion in 2004, three years after his career ended, when their children were 1 and 3. “I watched him change really rapidly, and it was scary.”
Over the next decade, Vermillion continued to withdraw from his family. His drinking became extreme and his behavior more erratic, family members said. He married a second time, but that union lasted only about a year. In 2018, he was arrested, accused of aggravated domestic battery after an incident with a girlfriend. He went in and out of rehabilitation programs for alcohol and prescription drugs, emerging only to insist to his family that the programs did not help him, that he was incapable of being helped.
His daughter, Ava-Grace, got accustomed to him missing her dance recitals. His son, Braeden, now 22, was devastated when he missed his high school graduation.

Source: New York Times

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