They’re Slow as Death

As you may know, in soccer, just like many other sports there can be a lot of trash talk between the two teams. Whether you are the winning team or losing team during the game, everyone at some point just feels the urge to get so angry  at the opposing player, and people handle that in many different ways. Some people are very good at holding in their emotions, some are not. Those who are not sometimes either take it out verbally or physically, and the outcome can vary.

This season, there is a particular game that sticks out to me. It was September 20th, our record was currently 6-0, so we were feeling pretty good and we were about to have our game vs. Mt. Abrahm. We were all pretty pumped up, adn even after a very very long 2 hour ride on the bus, some wrong turns, feeling like we were never going to get there, we arrived and were ready to show this team what we were capable of. As we stepped foot onto the field and heard the first whistle blow, we immediately started eating up every opportunity we got to score and keep the game moving, and the more successful we got, you could see the rage build up more and more inside the players of the opposing team. Every time we did something good, it was like another piece of wood was added to the fire that was brewing inside their team, just creating the madness that they would try and poor onto us This team happened to be one of those that are not good at dealing with losing, and do not hide it at all. As the good team we were, we were halfway through the game and already beating them 3-0, so as you could imagine they were not too happy with us. People don’t typically like when the underdogs suddenly become the best, and that is what happened to us this season. In years past, we were always just looked at and talked about as “oh don’t worry, it’s just oak hill, that small school that we don’t have a problem with beating”. But then, we surprised everyone, coming at them with things we had never seen before, winning almost every single game, and defending our year priors MVC championship title. As the game moved along, you could notice the attitudes of Mt. Abrahms team start to change, by the way their faces looked, their body energy, the way they were playing, and all different signs that they didn’t care about playing the game of soccer at this point, their main focus was to try and defeat us, and make us start to make more mistakes by the way they were going against us. As I can remember, the comments started to flow from the mouths of the Mt. Abrahm soccer team, even including the coach at times. Hearing things from them such as “don’t worry, they’re slow as death”, “you can definitely out-run her, shes 3 times your size” and my all time favorite, “get out of my face you FREAK!”. We could’ve handled this many different ways, but we are a pretty good team. we’re good at dealing with our emotions, and focusing just on getting the job done, which was finishing the game.

This is where laughter came into play. The Mt. Abrahm player’s goal was to get us all shooken up by the things they were saying, or for it to cause us distress and so on. But instead, we just simply made light of the situation and laughed at the things they were saying. We continued from this by laughing at how disrespectful and trashy their players were, and not making fun of them for being less talented soccer players than us, but for thinking that the things they were saying to us were going to help them win that game. When it comes down to it, the way you interact with the other team and no matter how bad you make them feel, you will still not win the game if you are not putting in the focus and drive, which was not clear to this team. We finished this game by beating them 5-0, and we left there with all smiles on our faces, not only because we were continuing our record of being undefeated, but this also made us realize how much classier of a team we were, and seeing that some people do not have their priorities in line.

In this world, your life and happiness are what you make it. If you feel like negative comments and trashing on other people is really what’s best for you, than so be it. But what I learned from this day was that you will be much happier and more successful if you just smile, laugh, and move on from those who cannot. This game could have taken a much different turn, we could have joined in with their negative comments and started not playing soccer as well, but instead we used it as a learning opportunity, and it made some pretty great jokes that we will forever look back on.