Soccer, soccer
With a little unease, I read the selections for the 2010 Men’s Soccer Tournament and my entire soccer past hit me hard, right in the face. I want to be there. I belong there.
Without going into too much deep thought and useless banter of how soccer has been my life, how I still can’t go a few days in a row with out picking up the ball and getting a couple hundred juggles in, dreaming about making through-balls in my sleep (not a joke), etc… I still am questioning myself when these thoughts of uneasiness will go away, if ever.
To calm myself, I have to think back when I actually was experiencing all my hardships of injury and constant rehabilitation that caused my spark to transfer in the first place. I definitely wouldn’t have left my sport and my team if I wasn’t actually feeling exhausted and completely worn out. College soccer is a job, no exaggeration there. Twenty-five plus hours a week invested. Almost all of those hours can be the best of your life (besides the two or three devoted to straight fitness and conditioning) if you are healthy and out of the training room. However, this time can feel like fifty plus hours if it is not spent as it is intended to be. On crutches, in a boot, in normal shoes, on the sidelines, not allowed to run, just walk. In an hour early before practice for rehab and treatment and staying late after practice for more treatment. After one or two of these injuries, it’s not a big deal. It’s actually kind of nice, a little break from the go, go, go of training and the season. However, after two or so of these instances, all of the fitness your body achieved has diminished and you must start over. When you work so hard in rehab and get your spirits up to actually play again, but end up pulling your calf in sprints the last five minutes of practice, knowing that the next week is going to be filled with more rehab, more minutes in the ice whirlpool, and ultimately, more minutes off the pitch and on the sidelines, exactly the opposite place you want to be. Not a fun place to be.
I feel like that’s why my coaches responded with such a positive attitude. I know they saw potential in me to be a player, as they started me or put me in games when I was healthy, but they also understand the effects of consistent injury on a college athlete and know that this is definitely not everything life boils down to. In the end, it is only a game. But I do wish I could be back under the lights of NCAA Division 1 soccer playing, or at least videotaping up high in the stands and hanging with my teammates. I know the friendships I made at Winthrop on my team will last a lifetime. When you’re with a group of guys seven days a week, you have a special bond. My time with them is priceless in my mind! On that thought, I really need to go see them and let them know that!
So to answer the previous question, when will these feelings of unease go away? I don’t think they will. But I know that is normal, because I have a passion for the game I was born to play. I don’t believe God gave me talent and allowed me to play for almost twenty years of my life just for me to get a scholarship and play at the highest amateur level in college. I know soccer is something that I will carry with me much further down the road, either it be through coaching the youth and my children, teaching them a sport that has changed my life and will change theirs, or connecting with people across country borders in under-deserved areas of the world; unable to communicate verbally, but completely able to communicate through a ball and two feet. I know soccer is in my life for a reason. And that reason may have been for only two years of division one soccer instead of four! Soccer is life, and always will be!
On that long, boisterous note… I think I am going to post predictions for all of the first round games of the NCAA tournament.
