Prianka Singapura
P 2A: Predators
As I stand in my dorm room, I dress in a burnt orange jersey with a number six on the back. I put on white shorts, shin guards, burnt orange socks, and Predator cleats.
There is a tingling in the pit of my stomach: it is a combination of anxiety, excitement, and fear. I take a deep breath and look into the mirror one more time before I leave my dorm room. I am ready for my interpretive dance.
As I take the soccer field alongside my teammates I am comforted. I can trust them; they are dependable and will not let the team down. I alleviate the tension in my knuckles in preparation for kickoff. It is one of the many rituals I perform before I can begin playing, like the tradition of the Longhorn football team to “rub their horn signs on an actual set of horns from tip-to-tip,”[2] which gives them strength and inspiration to play their best. Another ritual is proudly adjusting my captain’s badge on my arm. As we kickoff and I begin to run, I feel the soft earth under my cleats and can smell the freshly cut grass. A bead of sweat runs down my forehead as I begin the series of sprinting, jogging, sprinting, and jogging. There is constant movement and never a dull moment. I am always on my toes and in a clear and alert state of mind. The bright afternoon sun shines in my eyes as the referee blows his whistle signaling halftime and I come out of my rapture.
Soccer is a physical interpretation of my emotions; it is my most innate form of personal expression. It gives me both an outlet to release my anger and frustration and a way to express my happiness and energy. Growing up as an introvert, I was sometimes unaware of my own emotions until I played soccer. Then, through my movement, energy, and focus, my thoughts and emotions elucidated. Access to my emotions is a valuable tool that helps me build relationships. It also allows me to truly know myself. I have discovered that I am a competitive, driven, and passionate person. This state of self-awareness comes from the introspective experience that I have when I play. I fall into a meditative state where all I see is the ball, my teammates, and the opponents. I don’t hear the crowd; I am alone with my thoughts and emotions. In my trance the loudest noise is my own breathing. I just play. It is what athletes call getting into the zone. When I am in the zone, I can cut quickly, jump high, and sprint swiftly. I love quick motions; in fact, this is the reason that I play the offensive position of forward. I sprint as fast as my legs can carry me and I feel like a bird soaring through the air. There is wind blowing in my face and my body is one fluid object, just floating across the ground. I love the feel of playing soccer and I love all that it has brought to my life. The soccer field is a place that is “claimed by [my] feelings;” I have control over it and myself when I am there.[3] It is my “refuge from…the chaotic world.” [4]
Like any true passion, soccer delves into the pit of my emotions. During my junior year of high school, our team qualified for the regional finals. This match would determine who would travel to the state tournament and represent our region. As we took the field, I soon realized that our team was at a physical disadvantage; we were nowhere as tall or as muscular as the Cougars. However, we used our size to our advantage by sprinting faster than them and playing the ball on the ground rather than in the air. In the second half with eight minutes left on the clock, our team was awarded a corner kick.
This is an opportunity to score. Time seemingly stopped as my teammate Rachel took the kick: the ball soared through the air in an arch-like motion until it reached its apex. As my eyes followed it, I realized it was slowly descending towards me. I don’t recall ever taking my eyes off the ball or hearing any noise. I watched the rotating hexagons as they plummeted to me, arched my neck and back, and swung forward with all my strength and emotion. The ball felt like it barely touched my head and then one moment later, it was in the back of the net!
We had scored! The game was tied one-to-one. With six minutes left on the clock, we had no choice but to play defensively and hope that we would win in overtime. Unfortunately, Fate had other plans. As I was hustling to the ball, I was pushed down from behind and I landed on my knee in an awkward manner. I heard a pop from my knee, but surprisingly I didn’t feel any pain. I got up slowly and started to run again. Two minutes later, one of my teammates committed a foul and the Cougars were awarded with a free kick from about eighteen yards away from the goal. My body started shaking. I couldn’t help but pray to God that the ball did not penetrate our goal keeper. I looked into the eyes of my teammates and saw only fear. When the whistle blew, one of the Cougars kicked a beautiful shot that curved into the upper right hand corner of the net. We had lost. As the referee blew his whistle three times, indicating the end of the match, I felt like I returned to my body. The adrenaline began to wear off and I felt the pain in my knee and heat on my face. Tears welled up in my eyes and I cringed as I shook the victorious paws of the Cougars. Our season was crushed.
As it turned out, the popping of my knee was actually the tearing of my meniscus and MCL in my right knee.
I would need surgery and would have to sit out for four months. Unfortunately, the next four months of club soccer were crucial to college recruitment. All I felt was anger. Not only did the Cougars beat us, but they took away the potential for me to have a future in the sport I loved. After my surgery, I did not make a diligent effort to rehabilitate my knee. I mistakenly channeled my anger towards soccer and thought that I did not want to return to it. My high school team heard about my dissension and came to visit me. I looked around at eighteen of my best friends and realized that I would be letting them down if I did not return. If I quit, one of the family would be missing. This was the only way that I made it through the rehabilitation process: with the thought of regaining that part of myself. After thorough rehabilitation, I returned to the field and realized that for the first time in my life, I felt hesitant on the field. I did not feel calm or like I was in an oasis; instead, I felt frightened and like I was in a chimera. It took many more practices and games to regain the confidence that I had lost, but I looked to former athletes like Freddie Steinmark who had “the courage to play even though his leg was hurting him.”[8] Athletes like Steinmark inspired me to continue playing, and eventually, I stopped feeling the persistent pain in my knee. I learned to overcome physical pain with mental ambition. While I don’t think I will ever physically regain all of my ability, I believe that I have gained more heart from my injury. My will and excitement to play has only been elevated because I know what it is like to have my passion stripped from my grasp.
As my teammates exemplified, soccer fosters a camaraderie that I never witnessed in any other setting. My teammates have become my closest friends, and it is through their support and motivation that I reclaimed my passion. During the season, I spend more time with my friends than I do with my own family. We get to know each other on personal levels and form friendships that all stem from our common passion for soccer. The fact that we all have such commitment to our team is the groundwork for our friendship. We respect that each person is willing to give all of themselves, both physically and emotionally, and in return we give the same of ourselves. It is a cohesive relationship that is unique and incomprehensible to those outside of the soccer family. Off the field, we are just as close, but less serious. We create our own fun with jokes and laughter. “Shared laughter creates a bond of friendship. When people laugh together… they become a single group of human beings” that enjoy each other’s company.[9] Soccer has only been good to me; it has delivered my very best friends, amplified my confidence, and strengthened my character.
During my senior year of high school, soccer rose to new heights. Our team was the best one in years and its six seniors were the glue that held it together. I have never worked so hard at anything, including school; I placed soccer above everything except my family. It was my priority and like Yeats, “for days [at a time] I could think of nothing else.”[10] It was important to us that the seniors leave a legacy. The legacy we wanted to leave was not about winning (although that was on our minds), but it was about community and strength.
We wanted our successors to remember us as a close-knit group that worked hard and “made approaching [our] goals the basis of [our] self-respect rather than reaching [our] goals.”[12] After a season of triumphs, including district, area, and regional championships, our team had a banquet to commemorate all our efforts. When our coach spoke, he said that the legacy we were leaving behind was “that whenever [we] played the game of soccer [we] left everything [we] had on the field, did everything [we] possibly could for the team to win, not for [ourselves] but for team…”[13] This encompassed our season. Having that kind of passion and enthusiasm was both physically and mentally stimulating.
With the end of my senior year of high school, I struggled with the idea of leaving my high school life behind and discovering who I am. However, once at UT, I found my place among the women of the club soccer team because we shared a common passion.
While I am still on the path of self-discovery, maturation is an important stepping stone along the way, and one that soccer has brought about. I have matured as a player and a person through this game. I have learned the meaning of teamwork, compassion, and friendship. Teamwork is having respect for one another. It is having trust and confidence in others that allows you to leave selfishness behind. This will become very useful to me when I become a doctor as consulting with other doctors will be the best way to diagnose patients with unique problems. I have found that achieving a goal as a team is far more rewarding than achieving a goal individually because then celebration is shared. Teamwork is leaving competition behind for cooperation, which fosters compassion. Compassion is something that will be invaluable to me throughout my life, especially because I want to be a doctor who genuinely cares for my patients. Compassion obligates me to think of others before I act. It allows me to have a “harmless mind, mouth and hand.”[16] Compassion is the foundation of humanity and will help me pursue my lifelong goal of Ahimsa. Ahimsa is a vehicle traveled in throughout life on the path to end the controllable suffering of humanity. On an individual level, this means having only compassion for others, and no malicious intent. As a doctor, I feel that this way of life would be most beneficial to my patients and would allow me to have a successful career. Having compassion for others is the basis for a good friendship, something that I have learned to cultivate. Through my relationships with my teammates, I have learned that friendship is not something that is achieved at once or something that is set in stone. A friendship, like any relationship, needs constant attention, much as a gardener to his plants. It must be cultivated and supported unconditionally. I have found that the key ingredient in a friendship is loyalty, something which is difficult to find in a society where there is competition instead of cooperation. With this knowledge, I will be able to establish and sustain long-lasting relationships in the future, whether they are with my friends or my spouse. Soccer has been indispensable to the evolvement of my character and I hope that I can inspire others to experience the same growth.
This inspiration emerges on the field. As the sun beams down, halftime is ending. The whistle blows for the second half to begin and I see the focused looks of my teammates. Screaming words of encouragement I run on, hoping that our team can finish the game with the one-to-zero lead that we have earned. At this point all anxieties and inhibitions about playing have long since vanished. In their places lies comfort, solace, and enthusiasm; the same comfort that I felt when I first stepped onto a soccer field fourteen years ago.
