Personal Narrative: The Travel Soccer Team

Do you know how to help a girl overcome her shyness and build confidence? Suggest she tries out for a travel team of her sport of choice that she excels at while doing. This is what helped me when I became a player many travel softball teams I have became a part of; becoming a member of the teams made tremendous impacts on my life.

Every person becomes discouraged at some point in their life. They become consumed with frustration and feel as though all hope is lost. My story of discouragement begins at the start of my junior year track season. I had made so many improvements since the previous season and knew I had the potential to be the best in the state. However, the first few track meets of the season this did show at all. For some reason I could not put it all together in the competition setting and ended up not clearing any bar the two first meets in a row. I felt like giving up, I had put my heart and soul into this and was not getting anywhere near the results I had expected. Even though I was at my lowest point I knew I loved the sport far too much to ever quit,

My dad always told me that hard work always beats talent when talent fails to work hard, but I never really thought of it that way. Once the tryouts had started I depended on the talent that I had. By the time it was the second day I was feeling really confident that I had this in the bag. I thought I was going to make the team easily. After the tryout, a few days later the coaches sent a email out to all the parents showing who made the team and who didn’t. I read the list name by name, the farther down the list I went the more worried I got. Once I hit the last name I was devastated, I didn’t see

I felt useless and unwanted, like the scum on the bottom of his shoe. I gave up. The worst part of this was the fact that my coach did not even realize that his words and actions were destroying me. I felt embarrassed for something that I should have been proud of, because it was a great accomplishment to make Varsity.

This was a critical and meaningful accomplishment for me at the time and still is. I always avoided conflict because I was afraid to step on anyone’s toes, and I especially feared change. Removing competitive soccer from my life was an immense change and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it. I’m proud of myself for accepting that I needed an adjustment in my life and being courageous enough to voice that desire. This was a turning point in my emotional self-awareness and being gentle with my stress load. I’m grateful to have had a support system of Mack and my mom during this

I was a freshmen now. A ref once said “We play big boy football around here.”

It was in fourth grade when I started playing golf frequently. I would always run off into my backyard, drop my ball in the giant divot I usually play from, and start hitting the ball towards my golf flag. It was just a hobby at the time. I wasn’t super serious about trying to go to tournaments, nor was I trying to become like Tiger Woods. I just wanted to play the game. As fifth grade came along, I learned that there was a high school golf team. I never really set goals in my life at the time, but it had finally came to the point where I set one: to make the golf team when I enter high school.

The first two tryouts came and I was fairly confident I would make the team, but waiting for that email was one of the most nerve-wracking times in my life. I was sitting in my bed, waiting for the email to show up. I was a river of sweat. My heart was beating while I opened the message; Congratulations on making the boys soccer team; I was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to start the season.

My summer went as planned. Working very hard to achieve my goal of making the best team I could. Being smaller than everyone else, I knew I had to set my standards higher and work harder than everyone else to keep up. I became obsessed. There was always something about that crunch on the ice when I took that step into my cross-over, the speed of the game, the intensity, and the gift of being able to play alongside 20 of my brothers to achieve the common goal of doing something bigger than all of us. I opened that heavy entrance door for the ice rink and immediately felt that rush of eagerness to lace up the skates. With this in mind, I took a step onto that ice and my tryout debut was incredible. I was ecstatic feeling that all my hard work was starting

Being shoved to the ground and coming up with a mouthful of turf and a bloody nose isn’t the ideal way to spend a friday night, but for me, it's something I put blood, sweat, and tears into. Soccer has been a passion of mine since my father dropped me off at the local YMCA when I was at the tender age of four. Spending all of my free days for thirteen years running after a soccer ball is arguably what made me into the person I am today. Unity, tenacity, passion and pride have all been morals that are valued within the sport and in my own philosophy. I have explored places I’d never give a second thought to because my sport took me there. Friends I had made came from the sport I played. I never ended up asking for friends to come over because to me, practice was hanging out with my friends, doing an activity with a purpose.

As an in-coming freshman who hadn’t played on a school team in middle school, I was at a disadvantage because I was behind in skills and didn’t know many of the tricks. Fortunately, the coach saw my potential and I made the varsity team. My coaches and teammates continually pushed me and helped me become an even better player than I was before. Over the course of my four years on the team, I faced several obstacles that made me feel weak and inadequate, but to overcome them I reminded myself that I loved soccer. The biggest obstacle I faced was getting a concussion my junior year. The ironic part is it sparked something in me; I was determined to heal quickly and push myself past my limits. In the end, I became more aggressive on the field and one of the best players on my team. The coaches noticed this huge change and awarded me the Coaches’ Award at the end of the season. Knowing I had more potential, I pushed myself even further and my talents were recognized by the new coach my senior year. I achieved my goal of starting every game and played a majority of the eighty minutes of regulation time. My determination to get better and overcome my obstacles paid off my senior year when I awarded second-team

One of my best days was when my soccer team won the championship. I won several other championships ,but with other teams.This was my first season playing with this team. The major characters in this event were me, my teammates, my coaches and the parents. This event took place in a park at sanger during the summer. I was twelve when my team won the championship. “ Championships bring joy and happiness ,but takes a lot of work to get there.

In my dazed state I was harshly awoken by a yank of my arm almost out of socket as I was pulled up. I searched for a comforting gaze from a teammate or coach something to reassure my fantasy that this was not my fault, but rather as looked at my coach my gut wrenched with disappointment as his disapproving scowl pierced my heart. I realized that this play would be my last that season, and I had forever marked my performance with a brand of failure. While on the sideline, the faces of coaches, players, and my parents occupied my thoughts and altered my reality. However as this final judgement on my performance was handed down, the cause for my failure was that I prepared for only what I anticipated. This myopic assessment of my game plan caused me to freeze with anxiety as my situation changed. I betrayed the very core of man’s survival nature that had carried him through the overwhelming trials of existence to that day and that time-adaptability. And as my

Growing up, I spent most of my time playing sports and trying to stay active as much as possible. As I got older, I became more serious with field hockey, and I was determined to make the varsity team my junior year of high school. All summer I spent working on my stick skills on the field, and my endurance in the gym in order to do everything I could to make the varsity squad. When tryouts started in the end of August, I hadn’t performed the way I wanted to, and girls I thought had no chance of making the team, played so well over the three days. However, I was hopeful I still had a shot on the varsity roster. On the last day of tryouts, all fifty of us were to find out what team we had made, or for the few girls, that they were getting cut

I was in the locker room surrounded by girls that I did not know. They all seemed to know each other. I began to feel like a fish out of water. When I found my friend, she led me out to the pool area where we waited for the rest of the team to trickle in. They were all chatting amongst themselves before the coach began practice. Practice lasted about two hours, during which I pushed myself to keep up. The team, I had realized, consisted of kids that had been doing this their whole lives. I found myself comparing everything I did to the others in my lane. My dives seemed sloppy, my turns were a mess, and my stamina ran out quickly. My abilities seemed to pale in comparison.