Personal Narrative: A Career As A Soccer Player

From the time I was a young child, I was taught the importance of hard work and dedication. Up to this point, I have lived by these principles, incorporating them into every aspect of my life. Although this determination has proved useful in many circumstances, it has been most apparent in my one true passion: soccer. I have put my heart and soul into the sport since the moment my five-year-old feet first touched a ball. Now I believe that growing up is about making decisions that one’s former self would have been much too frightened or intimidated by to follow through with. In some cases, it is having enough of a backbone to avoid being walked upon by those who think that they have a right to do so, no matter the repercussions. That is why that, in my opinion, the moment that I quit the Seneca Valley Varsity Soccer team was the moment that I finalized my transition from childhood to adulthood.
As a young boy of about nine or ten, it was a dream of mine to play on my school’s Varsity Soccer team. I spent many nights watching the current players contest with other schools for the title of WPIAL Champions. Being a young club soccer player, this was my ultimate goal. Now even though I had a strong passion for the game, my many years of club soccer were not easy. I was not a sub-par player, but I was also not the prodigy that some of my teammates were. I had to work much harder than most players to secure my starting spot on my team, but my efforts definitely payed off. For the first five or six years of club soccer, I held a spot as one of my team’s two starting center defenders. All of a sudden, while at a rainy tournament game in West Virginia, I went into a tackle wrong and injured my back. My entire soccer career went downhill from