Running

As I was standing on the Ingersoll Turf in Auburn, Maine it was about 8p.m and it was a cold winter night. I was with my global premier soccer team, and we were at soccer practice. It was the second month of the team starting, so it was still winter and we played at the inside turf. My Coach, Matio whom I believed to have anger issues, was very hard to understand. He was from England, and he had a very thick English accent, which made it impossible to learn new drills. He always liked to try new drills during practice, we always had a difficult time learning it since we could not make sense of his accent. I had a team of 15 girls, whom I never really talked too, no one talked to each other. Most of the girls on my team were older than me, and I was scared to talk to them, and they did not talk to me, so I did not talk to anyone. I basically just played with a bunch of girls who did not talk, and whose names I barely knew. So as you can see practice was not the best time. Within not talking to my team, and no one understanding the coach.

Matio was trying to teach as all a new drill, and since no one of us talked that was always really awkward doing drills. Which his thick accent did not help. He was putting up fake men, and I knew he was talking about the drill. Although I could hear him talk, I was not totally sure what he was saying. He said “ready to start it?”, so we all just nodded, and I knew everyone else on my team could not understand what he was saying, this usually happened. Then Matio said “okay lets start” he said it loudly, like he was annoyed, then stopped talking, and waited for us to line up and try the drill he just explained. We all looked at eachother and stood in three lines, the lines made a triangle. I was the second to go in line, we all tried to make sense of the drill and try and figure it out, the first group went, and they did not know what they were doing. He explained it again, and said in a loud irratited tone, “now this time any questions?”, no one said anything. When he asked if we had questions, I had questions such as “how do the lines start, and who startes with the ball?” , however I was to asked to speak up and ask. But we all should have asked a question, I should have asked a question.

So as my group went, we still did not know the drill, we messed it up again.This is where I messed up, and should have asked a question. We did not know the drill, after he explained it twice, so Matio got mad, and told us to run. We started running back and forth across the field. We had 30 minutes left of practice, and we run all those 30 minutes left. Let me tell you I hate running, so this 30 minutes was awful. Matio was so upset that we did not know the drill so he ran us. Let me tell you that running for 30 minutes was one of the worst times, it was so exhausting, and not worth it at all. I have never hated a soccer practice so much until that night. Even though I was scared to talk and ask questions. I knew I should have, then I would not be having to run for 30 minutes. At that moment realized I cannot be quiet anymore, and I needed to ask questions. If me asking a question makes me not have to run for 30 minutes, it is worth it. And If I kept up with not asking questions, I was going to hate coming to soccer practice knowing I was just going to have to run.

If I would have asked a question, or anyone asked a question, we would not be in the situation we are in. We would not have to be running, we could still be doing that drill during practice, instead of running.So that was the day I realized no matter how scared I was, I still needed to ask questions, because I never wanted to be in that same position I was in. Asking a question and talking when I was scared, was worth it. So overall asking a question is always better than not asking a question.

Photo by the(?) on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND