Missed Opportunity

In the fifth grade at Walton Elementary School, we always had a sports tournament between each of the trimester. We would always have five different games going on at once. My team, the green team, made it to the championship game in soccer because I scored the winning goal in our semi-final game, which we won one to zero.

It was the championship game now. The thing that I had dreaded the most about this game wasn’t the fact that I missed an opportunity. I had to deal with the embarrassment that came with the entire school watching me. I was confident heading into the game; I had done so well in games leading up to the championship. The other team was very average and lacked the skills needed to play soccer competitively but they somehow made it to the championship. I didn’t think of my team as the underdogs but to the other teams we were considered less than.

We tied at only one point each, the pressure was on. My teammate had the ball in mid field and he passed the ball to me, I tried to keep control on the field. I was dribbling the soccer ball through the defenders of the opposing team and I was trying to shoot it at an angle. My teammate had a better shot for the net but instead of passing it to him I shot the ball. The goalie dropkicked the ball to just before mid field and the mid fielder on the opposing team got to the ball before me. They passed it to their teammate who then headbutted it into the net and the game was over. I was the reason yellow team won the championship. I felt like I let my entire team down. I could’ve passed it to my teammate earlier in the game but instead I let my own pride get in the way and took the shot myself. I remember being ashamed of myself, I had wasted all of our talent. I was so humiliated. Now, I pass it instead of taking the shot on my own.

“Soccer Ball” by jbelluch is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0