When you're five years old and your parents sign you up for the town's youth soccer team, you never thought it would be the beginning of something that would last for the next 12 years. These years progressed from hyper five year olds who just wanted to braid each others' hair and the reversible travel jerseys where rivalries were built with other towns in annual tourneys to being on a club team with brand-new, dope gear where things became a little more serious and a high school varsity jersey which symbolized the beginning of the end. When I look back at my career in sports, especially soccer considering that was what I played for the majority of my life, it seems so strange that I don't play anymore.
I wouldn't be who I am today without the sports I played in my younger years. The friends I made, the places I traveled to, the memories stored in the back of my head that I don't think will ever fade. They're all thanks to sports. I believe that although you don't sign up for the sport itself, you continue playing because of the memories you make along the way. Nothing bonds people better than having to run until you can't feel your legs, three hour bus rides to far away games, or waiting out storms in cars, old gyms, or even in playground equipment (yeah, that happened once). I mean, I still have songs that instantly bring me back to playing because they were songs that we warmed up to before games.
So it's weird now, as a freshman in college, to not have all that. To not have a group of girls who have gone through exactly what you've gone through, who know you at your sweatiest and your most aggressive, who you've spent hours with every single day. Yes, it is definitely nice to get a break from full field sprints or timed runs, but without those you don't get all the good stuff. You don't get all the mutual whines about having "Monday run-day" or "power hour Fridays," you don't get all the inside jokes that could only come from having spent years with the same girls, you don't get the celebration of winning the big game or even the tears and frustration of losing it. It's all gone.
Sometimes I really regret not deciding to play anymore and I wish that I could continue to create those memories and have those laughs, but I just have to remember all the goodness that came from playing in my past and cherish that for what it was. I am so thankful for everything that sports gave me, and now I can look forward to finding a new team. Even if it doesn't involve kicking a ball into a net or running up and down a field, as long as it makes me as happy as sports did all those years.
