Since I was very young I enjoyed playing soccer. It became my passion when I was about two years old and it has continued to be the sport that I like the most. In high school I started playing soccer with the varsity team since my Sophomore year, even though I had trained with them before, even since I was a Freshman. My last two years on the team were the best because I had no competition. I was the starting goalkeeper and I even got to be the captain of the team. We even went to play a tournament in Chile against other American Schools were we finished first. In the final we went to penalty shootouts against the home team and I saved 2 penalty kicks and scored one.
Coming to UR I didn’t think I would be able to play soccer at the Varsity level, but I still wanted to play some soccer just in order to not lose shape and because, after all, it is my favorite sport. After the first week of classes I went to play a pick up game with my RA and some of his friends and they told me I could tryout for the soccer club. Therefore, as soon as the announcement came about the days for the tryouts I was extremely excited.
The first day of tryouts was on a Tuesday and it started at 4:00pm at the IM Fields. At that time I had class, but I decided it would be worth it to skip a day of Core in order to play some soccer and hopefully make the team. I got my backpack ready and left for the IM Fields, full of energy. When I got there I was surprised by how many people were trying out for the team. We were about 40 people, if not more, but I was glad to see that only 2 other goalkeepers were trying out. I wasn’t sure of how good they were, but I figured I had a good chance of making the team.
The first day went by and I did a pretty good job. I impressed many of the people who were already part of the club, and they told me to go back the next day for the second day of tryouts. I was feeling good about myself at that point and felt pretty confident because I had made a good impression.
On Wednesday there were only about 20 people left, but the other 2 goalkeepers were still there. At that point they told us that they would only be choosing one of us, since they already had a goalkeeper. I knew it was going to be harder to make the team at that point, but I was having great performances.
Unfortunately, on the last day of tryouts (Thursday) I got injured during practice. During the first 10 mins. of the scrimmage I jumped for the ball and fell to the ground after colliding with one of my teammates. He fell on top of me and stepped on my knee while doing so. I tried to keep on playing, knowing that I had to do so if I didn’t want to lose all chances of making the team, but the pain was too much. I had to watch the rest of the game from the outside with a bag of ice on top of my swollen knee, lamenting over what had just happened. To add to my misery, the goalkeeper who I considered to be my main competition started saving every single shot, taking advantage of the situation.
I didn’t make the team, but I will definitely go to the tryouts again next year. In the meantime I have continued to play pick up games in order to not lose my fitness level. People are always calling me to go play with them so I know that what happened with the soccer club was just a matter of luck. And I will have better luck next time.
