Nonfiction/Expository Essay
90 Minutes
I was always a fan of soccer since I was little. I grew up watching soccer games and playing soccer at the park with my friends. Soccer was just life to me. The greatest sport ever created. I was in fifth grade when I entered my first official soccer team, which was the school’s soccer team. We were called the Cougars. I sent my application to the school hoping with the result that I made it to the team. There were many applications and not every one would of made it to the team. Thankfully they called me in and was announced that I was one of the applicants that made it to the team.
I had one of the best seasons in my life with an official soccer team. I was a good player and the fastest one in the team. I played forward, so I was in charge of scoring the goals, which was something I was very good at. I scored the most goals for the team that season and it was something that I was proud of. I wanted to be known as one of the best players in the team, which I believed so at the time. It is a good feeling when everyone thinks that you are a good player and it was an acknowledgment that I liked being recognized for. I was the coach’s favorite too. Ms. Gibson, our coach at the time, always started me in the field and rarely were the times when she benched me. I was also liked by all of my teammates. They were the ones that agreed on making me captain for the team. So it happened. I was captain of the team that season and Ms. Gibson agreed on that. It was an honor being captain for my first official team that I played for. When it came to practice and the coach made us be split into groups, everyone wanted me in their group. I was the first person to be called when selecting groups and that was also something that I enjoyed because it meant everyone recognized how good I was at soccer.
Three years later I came back to my school’s soccer team after missing sixth and seventh grade of soccer. I did not make a come back until eight grade that I joined the team again. It had been a couple years since I last played in an official team and I was glad I was coming back. I still had practice and experience in soccer since I kept going to the park to play soccer with friends after school during those two years that I missed from being in the team. I joined the team and I was still pretty good at playing soccer. The team had changed a lot within those two years. I was no longer the captain of the team nor considered the number one best player in the team, but I was still good enough to make a difference in the field. What I was very good at was running, which was something Carlos, our new coach, had mentioned to me. He liked my speed and that is why he put me as forward. The same position that I had been playing since I was little. I made a lot of goals in my eight-grade season as well with the team. That year, our team won the Golden Ball at the end of the tournament. We were the best team that season and were undefeated for the whole year. I wanted to continue playing soccer with my same team but that would no longer happen since we would all go to different high schools next year after we graduated. I considered myself a good player so I knew that I would find a place in the soccer team to wherever high school I was going to go to.
On year later, after graduating and being a freshman in high school, I joined the team my fist year. With my previous experience in soccer and the recognition that I had back from elementary school I was confident that I would have the same reputation in here. I had really high expectations of myself from joining my high school’s soccer team just to find out that I was wrong and had one of the most challenging tasks I had ever faced.
I was so used to being the best at soccer that when I entered high school and noticed the amount of competition I had, I felt bad about myself. I did not want to compete against my teammate in showing who was the best player. Part of this came from elementary school where I did not have to compete against my team to show who was the better player because it was obvious that I was. In high school, everything was different. I had to compete and fight for a place in the team so that I would be able to get my spot in the starting eleven. I still remember the first day of training. It was unlike my previous training in elementary. Soccer training in soccer felt like military training. Coach Manny made us do intense exercises that I was not used to and I was barley able to catch up with everyone else. Since the first day of training, I knew that this was going to be a big challenge for me and that my spot in the team was not going to be secured. I had to win my place in the team and I did not know if I was going to be capable making that happen.
I had a big conflict in me and a question of why was not I a good player anymore. I couldn’t have lost skill with just one year of transition between eight-grade and freshman year in high school. It was something that bothered me a lot and this was because I was so used to being the best at something, in this case soccer. When I had the feeling of being the best at soccer in the team, it felt so good that I did not want someone to take that feeling away from me. At this point I played soccer for more than just having fun. It was not about having fun, but rather showing that I had to be the best and that no one could have been better than me. Since I was no longer that soccer player in my new team, that was something that frustrated me the most.
At the start of the season once Coach Manny got to know all of us he gave the list to us of the players that made it to varsity. Disappointed, I did not hear my name called. I was made because I did not make it to the varsity team when I really wanted to be in it. I did not understand why I hadn’t made it if I gave a strong effort in proving to my coach that I was one of the best players to be qualified for the varsity team. Most of the varsity was made up of seniors and juniors, some sophomores and a couple of freshman and I was not any of them.
During the games and practices I put even more effort because I really wanted join the varsity team. It was a challenge for me because the coach has already picked his Varsity team and they performed well making it harder for me to impress the coach. I still played the games in the regular team. There was a regular team where everyone had to have playing time and varsity team where they went to play more competitive games in a higher division. While I had some playing time in the regular team I thought that I performed okay. Not enough to impress my coach to have him put me in the varsity team. I honestly did not know what to think of my own performance because I kept underestimating myself thinking that if I as not in the varsity team meant that I was not that good at soccer as I used to think I was in elementary school. I played more games through out the season but I would lack goals. I had not scored any goal that season, but I still have an overall good performance until one day I was able to catch my coach’s attention. Maybe I did not have the skills of other soccer players in my team but I did have something that the coach liked about me. My speed. That was the second time that a coach had mentioned my speed when it came to soccer. “You have a fast speed and I would like to see you play in the varsity game next week”, Coach Manny told me. I grew a smile in face at the sound of the new news that was given to me. I would finally get to play in varsity and that was something that I was looking forward to since day one.
“Jaguar”, my coach referred to me. Since that day Coach Manny started calling me Jaguar and soon everyone knew me as Jaguar. Everyone started calling me Jaguar and it felt good to have a nickname that my coach had given me after complementing me that I was a fast runner. The week came and I was on our school bus with the rest of the varsity team on our way to the varsity game. As I had expected coach Manny benched me for most of the game. I knew that I was barley making the varsity team so I wouldn’t start playing in the field right away. Then he called me with 10 minutes left on the game. I took advantage of those minutes and used my pace in soccer to keep impressing my coach. He liked my performance in the game and played me one last game in varsity for our next game. It was the last game of the season and I didn’t get a lot of playing time either. I was bench and played again the last ten minutes of the game.
I was always the type of person that felt proud of being the best at something and showing off to my team players that I was better than them. Through a certain time that was quite true. I had soccer skills that non of my team members had that made me feel superior than them because I was considered the best at it. It was great to hear my team say “We need you on the team” over and over because it made me feel that without me the team wouldn’t perform well. It was a necessity that I played in the team if our team wanted to play. However, I came to high school and all that vanished. I did not feel superior to anyone and it contrast, I felt weaker than everyone else because I had to accept the fact that I was not as good as them and for that reason I was not even called to the varsity team. All I wanted was to make it to the varsity team and prove to myself that I had the capability in growing as an athlete and make myself better each time through hard work. The results weren’t given soon and although it was towards the very end of the season that I played only 10 minutes in the last two games, that was still an accomplishment for me. That was a real reason to be proud of myself. Being proud is not about being better than others, but rather proving to yourself that you can achieve goals that you have set for yourself and being able to achieve them as challenging as they might be.
