Russia
Alexy
Aljona
Arina
Artyom
Dasha M.
Dasha S.
Dima
Dima Zh.
Irina
Ksusha
Kristina
Margarita
Misha
Nastya
Nikita
Olga
Ruslan
Sasha
Zhenya
Zhenya B
Ever since I could walk I loved to run, and run as fast as I could. Then I found out there was a way to make it even better. All you had to do was add a black and white ball, two goals, and two teams.
I started playing soccer when I was four. Of course back then no one really knew how to play soccer the right way, but everyone still enjoyed it. We’d play by randomly kicking the ball in the air without knowing or caring where it was going. Half the time, someone would kick it the wrong way. And it was just pure luck if it actually made it into the net for a goal.
I stayed in that soccer league with the same team for three years. Those years were possibly my best in terms of the number of games we won. We were on fire; the best team in the league. The other teams trembled as we stepped on the field, an army of 5-year-old soccer tyrants. We could crush all the competition. There was one game where the same kid got hit four times in the face. After the fourth time he decided to leave the game. We got first place in our league two out of three years, and the year we didn’t cut it, we got second.
After those three great years, my next team was rather pathetic in comparison. When you turn six you have to join a new league and this time I got assigned to a team that simply wasn’t as good as my last one. Don’t get me wrong, most of the people knew how to play soccer well enough, they just couldn’t work together as a team. No one either knew how to pass or just didn’t want to. The funny part was most of the players were friends off the field. But once the game started, it seemed like they all had problems with everyone else. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the people who didn’t pass at all could at least shoot the ball, but no one could. That year, we didn’t even make it to the playoffs.
As it would turn out, I got stuck with that team for another less then amazing year. But thankfully after that, I started playing for a different league. This time I was on the Beye School team. It wasn’t just a team reserved for Beye School but it was mostly made up of Beye kids so that’s what everyone called it. Little did I know this would be the most challenging season we’d ever play.
At first it seemed like this team wouldn’t be anything special. Everyone on the team was good at soccer but again, no one knew how to play as a team. No one would pass the ball to each other. It looked like this season would not be worth the sacrifice once again.
Our first game told us that we needed to work a lot harder if we wanted to make it anywhere. It had been a blowout, 7-1 in their favor. For the next week all we worked on at every practice was passing skills and playing for each other. When our next game came around, all the extra practice really showed. It actually looked like we were a team now. We were passing and running for each other all over the field. By the end of the game, we had pulled our season out of the gutter with the final score, 3-1 us.
Since practicing “team skills” had worked so well before, we decided to keep that up at practice. Coach White eventually added stamina practice as well as team skills. We would run around Oak Park at practice. After a while that helped in our game a lot too. The whole team could run farther for longer.
Most of the season went by pretty well. We only lost one other game that year. That put us in a position where we had a shot at the championship. It would be a knock-out tournament where if you lose one game, your can kiss your title and trophy goodbye. When the day of the tournament came, everyone had butterflies in their stomachs. We had to beat 3 different teams to claim the trophy in our division. The first team we played put up a tough fight. They weren’t as good as us but they still made one heck of an effort. We managed to make 2 goals by halftime and another 2 after the half where they only made 1 in the first half and 2 in the second, giving us our first victory on the road to our championship.
Our second game of the day took a much harder toll on us. The other team didn’t have much of a chance of winning, (I’m kind of surprised they even made it to the second round). They seemed to know this too because after about the first 20 minutes and after we had scored 2 goals, they started playing dirty. They were tripping and fouling all over the field, not caring about the score. By the time we had scored 4 goals in total, they had managed to take 2 of our players out of the game because of injuries. But the worst was yet to come. In the last half, with us up 5 goals and with 2 minutes to go, they took a shot and that our goalie managed to dive and stop but then one of their forwards ran in and slide tackled him, hitting him in the face with his cleats. He had to be carried off the field by the coach and never did come back in. The other team took their advantage of us having to put in our replacement goalie, who was a little less then qualified. They managed to score 1 goal but it was in vain, as the game was over in 30 seconds anyway, pushing them out of the tournament but taking our goalie with them.
The next game was the hardest game anyone on our team ever played. We were down 2 men and a goalie from our last game, not to mention everyone on our team was tired from playing 2 games just hours before. Thankfully, the other team had also suffered losses but none so important as a goalie. We had to put in our replacement goalie once again. When the game started, they scored a goal before we even knew what was happening. They were an amazingly fast team but we put up a fight. They scored another goal and we came back with 2. By half the score was 2-2. When the whistle sounded to bring us back on the field, everyone was dragging their feet. Both teams were tired and wanted to go home but the thought of holding that gleaming trophy seemed to keep their feet moving. As our teams went into battle once again, it did not look good for us. The other team had decided to stop trying to score and pull back to harden their defenses. If we couldn’t score another point by the end of the game we would lose in penalty kicks. Our coach called me and the other forward over during a goal kick and told us to do a give and go play around the last defender. The ball was sent flying across the field from the goal kick and I started dribbling it up field. My forward ran up ahead of me and I passed to him to keep it away from a defender. Then I ran up past my teammate and he passed to me. I dribbled it past the last defender and was in shooting range of the goal. I sprinted with the ball at the goalie. I don’t know if the sun was in his eyes or if he was distracted but I shot the ball right at him and it slipped through his fingers giving us the goal we needed to clinch the championship!
We held them their for another minute until the whistle blew ending the game. Everyone jumped on me, patting me on the back and screaming in joy. We had done it. We had started the year hardly knowing how to work together and had ended it with a trophy.
USA
Darian
Duncan
Emily
Evan F
Evan T
Jakob
Jason
Kelly
Milo
Nathan
Philip
Richard
Ryan
Teddy
Tom D
Tom I