Coach

Coach

“Ready, thirty-seconds, go” those are the words you would be hearing every day after practice from our head soccer coach, Ross Sandberg. We were still kind of exhausted and breathing hard from the the last sprint coach had us run. We got set and ready for him to yell out our favorite word, “Go,” we took off like horses in a Kentucky Derby. All you can hear, as we sprinted from one side of the soccer goal to the other, was our feet stomping the ground, fast as possible, and the quick breaths of air we were taking. As some of us got to the soccer goal, we turned around and saw some teammates, a long way from not being finished, and heard the coach yell out, “Twenty-five seconds!” Meaning if they didn’t finish the sprint in the five-seconds left from the thirty-seconds he gave us, we as a team, would have to redo the thirty-second sprint. We rooted the guys on, “ You can do it guys. Finish strong.” As the last guys finished, we all turned to the coach and waited for him to tell us the time. “You guys beat your time, by two-seconds.” We all yelled, gave each other high fives, some love taps and you could hear some of us laugh because it was sure a close one, and there’s no way in hell we wanted to redo the sprint. Coach made us run sprints everyday; however, he was also a great motivator, father figure to most of us and great coach. Being part of the soccer squad and with him coaching had have to been the most important days in my life.
In high school, I had to run sprints everyday if I wanted to be part of the soccer squad. The soccer team ran sprints everyday after practice and by that time we were already worn out. It was like the funnest thing to look forward after practice. Coach

would always say, sprints were like an award given to us from him, and the faster we could run sprints, the more endurance we would have, to compete against our
opponents. Our Coach would push us to extreme limits when we just wanted to fall to our knees and cry. He... [continues]

Read full essay