*BIG* News

Let me start you off with a little background before I get to the *big* news. I don’t think I’d consider myself athletic. I love to play sports and run around but I’m not a superstar by any means. Especially with sports involving balls. I swam almost year round through junior high and high school and definitely held my own – but I probably wasn’t good enough to swim at my Division I school. And I’ll be frank, I was sick of early morning practices by that point. I can count the number of times I’ve swam laps since then on two hands. I can ski well and I run, but those are just sports of sheer determination. Put enough effort into them (and for skiing, push yourself out of your comfort zone a bit) and you get better. But throw a ball into there and I’m a wreck. I have no hand-eye or hand-foot coordination and an incredibly slow reaction time. So when I decided to start playing soccer 3 years ago, those who knew me just laughed. Then when I broke my arm in my 3rd ever soccer game, no one though I’d be back. But I did come back and slowly, one game at a time, I got better. I was never intimidated by the ball or the other players on the field so my initial MO was to just get in the way of the other team. Then I started to jump on loose balls and kick them up field to someone how actually knew how to play. Eventually I started being able to trap passes and immediately pass the ball off to someone else. And in the past year, I learned to dribble the ball, turn it around, and make/receive passes while moving… all without the help of any sort of coach or mentor and only playing a day or two a week.

Now onto the present: On Monday night I was playing right wing on my outdoor team. The gal who should have been guarding me never seemed to be able to stick with me so I was open 9 times out of 10. The guys took advantage of it and passed me the ball time and time again. Granted I screwed up a lot, but we weren’t in danger of losing the game and each time I got the ball, I became more confident with it. I had some great passes and took a few shots on goal too. I felt like I played my best game ever on Monday night. Then last night I played with my indoor team and played forward again. And (drumroll please) I SCORED MY FIRST GOAL!!!! I was standing in the backdoor and caught a sweet pass from Max before popping it in. I was so excited – as was the rest of my team because they are the ones I started playing with 3 years ago and have seen how far I have come. My mom though, well she wasn’t quite as excited but it was 11:30 there when I called so I guess it is understandable. And to add to my excitement, I also assisted the second goal. So yeah, I’m a soccer superstar. At least for this week.