My Soccer Experience
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When I was young I started to play soccer because I saw everyone playing it. The way one man kicking a ball into a goal could make an entire stadium erupt. I thought it was amazing. When I was young I played for a league called Triangle United. Whilst I was in that league I played a lot and it was very fun but really chaotic. When I grew older, I realized that instead of playing in a recreation league, I should play for the North Carolina Football Club, which we call NCFC. When I tried joining, I had to go through tryouts first. It was hard, I had to play as a defender and pushed past my limit to keep playing, and even though my legs were hurting I got placed in the 2014 gold league which is higher than not only the silver 2014 league but also the junior team and the gold team is one of the hardest to get to. Whilst in the gold liege i figured out that i would then have activities for every day and no free time so i got downgraded to the junior league out of my own decisions. After I joined the junior league it was more my level with kids around my age trying their best too. But after a couple of games, I realized that no one had any kind of mental connection with me except for my brother. My brother was about equal to or worse than me, but he knew my playstyle, making our mental connection better than anyone else’s. When we were at practice doing a game on small goals with no keeper called a scrimmage the coach put us on opposite teams every single time except for one time where we almost dominated the field with our mental connection.
After practice we went into our dad’s car and he said, “You all will have a tournament on Saturday.” The current day was Thursday. We had to prepare for the most important and intense tournament of our season. We figured out, based on common belief, that one of the teams in the tournament has to play two games, depending on their loss-to-win ratio against the other teams. and one team only had to play one because they got a bypass. That team was one of the best but we figured out that they got the bypass because they had an injured player. When we went to our final practice on Friday before the tournament. We planned strategic tactics depending on some scenarios such as if one player got injured or if one player was missing. Though we mostly planned for the goalkeepers to be missing we also did it for some players too. We mostly had my little brother play striker or goalkeeper during practice because those were his strong suits. And I mostly played left winger, center midfielder, or defender because those were my strong suits and they coordinated well with my little brothers making us have our mental connections, dominate, and control the field. We practiced a lot and tried our best at the tournament because we had to play two games at the tournament tomorrow. When we went to go do the scrimmages we played with the big goals and goalkeepers this time so it wasn’t really a scrimmage it was more a practice tournament styled game. We started with me as a left defender and Jacob as the goalkeeper in a practice-tournament-style game. I got to the ball very quickly and scored, then I played heavy defense until we won.
When the tournament rolled around we were driving and realized that one of the teams dropped out meaning it would just be the final. One game. One trophy. When we got there we immediately got put in. I was the center midfielder, and my brother was the striker. When the game started, I got the ball passed to me by my brother very quickly, did a step over, faked a pass, then sent it down the field to my brother, and he scored. After that our team played very heavy defense and we were up 1-0 in the first 10 minutes of the 90 minute game. The rest of the half was like that we didn’t score much but their striker did a rainbow over the center back and shot it to the top corner. It looked like a misfire just outside the goal until it curved inward and everyone was shocked by their striker’s capabilities but that took all the energy out of him and he sat out for the rest of the half making it 1-1 in the first 45 minutes. After the first half finished we stepped out and talked to our coach Matt. He told us about the positions where I was being placed as left winger. The ref blew the whistle and we ran back onto the field. In the second half I pushed upfield right after kickoff calling for the ball. When the ball got past me I decided to fake a cross into a power shot and it almost went in but the goalkeeper’s fingertips grazed it just out of the goal area. The ref blew the whistle and it was a corner kick. They decided to make me take the corner kick but I saw no-one open so I took the shot and it curved right into the goal straight from the kick. Everyone was shocked by my shot including me. Then my team cheered but I reminded them that the game wasn’t over yet. We brawled until the final 5 minutes where the other team scored a goal making the score 2-2. Right after kickoff the other team stalled for a while and we couldn’t score a goal until in the final 30 seconds I saw an opening and ran there. My teammates saw me and lobbed me a pass and right when I thought it was going to go over me. I jumped higher than everyone and hit the ball with my head. Tweet Tweet Tweet! The whistle blew. My team cheered and as we left with the trophy in our hands. We went to go get ice cream and celebrate our glorious win.