Soccer was my life. I lived, dreamed and breathed the sport. It was my passion and it was something I was good at. Soccer was my outlet for my anger and frustration and kept me relaxed and focused. I loved the sport and thought I would play it forever. I had an amazing coach the first two years I played for a club team. Then it came time to for the new coach. The first time I met you I thought I had a lot I could learn from you. I didn’t think at the time you would be the one to cause me to lose my love for the game.
You were my coach, you were the new person I was supposed to look up to for direction and to learn from. The first few weeks I was excited. You were a college student taking your time to coach a bunch of fourteen year olds. You told us about what it was like to play soccer in high school and college. I admired you. Our first two weeks of practice you had everything planned out and your practices were intense but we learned a lot. You got the team excited for the season. The year before you we were the best team in our division. We ended with an undefeated season and that's where our team wanted to stay, and you promised to help make that happen. We lost our first game due to changes you made as our coach.
After this you changed as a coach. Rather than being our coach you decided you wanted to be our friend instead. Practice never started on time, the few times you decided to have practice, and you stopped pushing us to be better as a team. I was fine with it until you started to treat me like I was three. I was a school year behind the rest of my team but I was the same age as everyone else. You pointed that out all the time and told me I would never be able to bond with my team. You made me feel like an outcast on a team that I had played with and bonded with the past two years.
Due to how you started to coach you caused me to not want to practice. I didn’t want to grow as a player and I didn’t in fact, after playing for you I got worse. I was never able to feel like I was part of the team after things you, as a coach, told me. That was the worst season of soccer I had ever played. We did not win a single game that season and I was dreading playing for you again.
Thankfully it was the last season I had to play for you. You gave up your coaching position and the club gave us our old coach back. It was the most excited I had ever been when I found out you were gone and I was getting the best coach that I had ever had back. By that time though, it was too late. Practice wasn’t fun anymore; it had become a chore. The game wasn’t fun; it was something I had to do. By the time you had left you had caused me to lose my love for soccer. Even my favorite coach couldn’t bring it back.
You took the one thing that I loved away from me. I didn’t grow as a player, I became weaker. You didn’t help me grow as a person you tore me down. The way you coached caused a rift in our team and turned the game into a nightmare. You took the fun from the game and caused me to have feelings towards it I never thought I would have.
