Soccer and Its Finer Points

            The devastating heat of the midday sun sent most people in frantic search of shade, but as I felt the touch of the soccer ball at my foot, the summer heat wave vanished from my mind. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and ran off to join my teammates with my mother chasing after me, a bottle of sunscreen in her hand. My father chuckled and lingered behind to enjoy a pipe and converse with other soccer dads. I was five years old and was about to embark upon a journey that I am on still today. Though a sport on the surface, soccer is at least partially responsible for the person I am today, as it has taught me lessons and inspired feelings that would otherwise be unknown.
           
            There is no greater lesson the sport of soccer has taught me than the art self-discipline, which would otherwise be absent in my life. Growing up with a passion forced me to train, to work hard, and to fully commit myself. There were days when the field seemed longer and the ball seemed to move faster, but those were the days that tested me as a human being. Those are the days that made me question what I had inside and prompted me to set out and answer myself.

            The days I went to the field alone under the scorching sun simply to train my left footed shot that were the days that truly taught me the meaning of hard work. Cliché? Perhaps, but Anson Dorrance, the coach of the fabled North Carolina soccer program, once said, “The vision of a champion is someone who is drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when no one else is looking.” Through soccer I learned the true meaning of those words, and I still remember them every time I take the field.

            Soccer also affected me in the way of respecting others, regardless of my personal opinions. To play soccer correctly I have to respect my teammates, my opponents, and everyone else involved in the game. The game taught me to fight someone as hard as I could for 90 minutes. It taught me to wrestle with them, battle with them, and clash with them during the course of the game, then offer my hand as a sign of a job well done at the conclusion. At the end of the day there is always that mutual respect, that admiration of one another.

            Often times I have gotten into skirmishes with opposing players or referees, the worst of such instances coming in 2006 when I received two yellow cards for dissent in consecutive games. Neither my team nor I was playing well at the time, and it seemed to light a fire inside me. I couldn’t control my emotions in either game, but both referees and I looked each other in the eyes and shook hands at the end of the match. I have done many things I am not necessarily proud of on a soccer field, but I always end the day with my hand extended, and it is up to my counterpart to accept it.

            Along the course of my career, I have met many people through soccer and have remained close with a high percentage of them. Soccer provided me with a sense of belonging in even the most awkward of situations, allowing me an outlet during my adolescence. The club team I played with maintained the same core group of players from age eleven to seventeen, allowing us to become very close and form a brotherhood among us. The thirteen or fourteen of us who were together every summer for seven years developed a friendship we would not have found had it not been for soccer. I actually met my college roommate when I was nine years old at a tryout; we have been on the same summer team together ever since and plan to play together again at the College of St. Scholastica. To me, sports are one of the best ways of creating and maintaining friendships for a young, maturing child.
           
            I exited the field that day after my first day of soccer with sunburns on the back of my neck but with a brilliant smile on my face. As my mother chastised me about the dangers of skin cancer and my father shook hands and wished people well, my friends and I made plans to play together before next week’s game. The process was started, and I knew not just how important soccer would become in my life.