Today marks the first time in my life that I have every played a competitive game of soccer. After finally giving in to the temptation around me to involve myself in this competitive sport that I never even considered playing, I walked to the local tienda bought a new pair of soccer shoes, and a soccer ball. The soccer ball by the way immediately makes me the most popular person in the town. I rallied my brother, David the other PC Volunteer, and his brother and we made our way up to the Football Field. Oh yea, and Football is actually soccer everywhere in the world other than in the United States.
The young Nicaraguans who are in much better shape than I was at anytime in my life were poised to run us all over the field. The only request they had was that we play each game for 5 dollars. Just so you know 5 dollars is equal to approximately 100 Cordobas which would surpass the amount of money that many families make in one week. Not to mention It's more than 10% of my weekly pay. Besides I didn't think it was a good idea to mix gambling, my competitive nature, and the fact that I am trying to build bridges not burn them. Either way after sitting out one game we finally had our chance to play against the winning team. My team of five consisted of 2 American non soccer players, my Nicaraguan brother who is less athletic than I will be when I am 60 years old, and 2 guys who could barely match up with the worst 2 players on the opposing team. This made us the clear underdog.
After going down 2-0 in the first several minutes a fire started burning inside of me. I suddently felt that SOCCER was something I should naturally be good at. I mean what have I ever not been good at? At least this was the question I asked myself, so humor me for a minute. On the very next play we broke up the field and one of my teammates centered the ball to me. Without a flinch I struck the ball perfectly so that it went into the upper right hand corner of the goal. Of course my immediate reaction was to scream GOAL!!!!! as loud as I could despite the fact that we were still down by one goal. What happened in the next few minutes I couldn't even believe. I scored the next 3 goals as we stormed to a 4-2 lead. Each time I scored the celebration became more obnoxious. By this point many of the school girls had began watching and giggling at my on field celebrations. Furthermore much of the crowd will be in my class tomorrow afternoon when I show up to teach.
The game only got more exciting as I realized after scoring our 5th goal that we actually were playing first to ten. This posed a minor dilemma since I was already ready to throw up the rice and beans I'd eaten for lunch. Nevertheless I dug deep into the reserve tank and reminded myself that this was one place that I could gain some respect. Soccer is very popular here and they didn't care whether this was my 1st ever competitive game or my 101st game. We went down 9-8 on two really bad goal keeping errors at which time I demanded to take over as goalie. Immediatelely after making this executive decision I was able to stop two shots on goal, and preserve a final chance to get back in the game. After one save I found one of my team mates streaking up the field completely free of defenders, and so I threw the ball as far as I could landing it just ahead of his sprint, just as he reaached the ball the goalie started after him to try and stop the shot before it got deep into the zone. Just one great cross step later my team mate Orlando had an open shot on goal that he walked in to tie the game at 9-9. Of course I wouldn't even be telling this story if we hadn't won the game in dramatic fashion.
The most amazing thing about this afternoon is not that I played competitive soccer for the first time in my life and won on a last second goal, but that this morning I was sour. I couldn't seem to get excited about anything. This is really how fast the tide can turn. In the morning I can be struggling to spit out a few sentences in spanish, and by the afternoon I can be celebrating a victory on the soccer field with my new friends. It just goes to show that every moment be it good or bad will pass and open the door for something new and never before experienced. And for these and many other reasons I absolutely love every second of every minute of every day.
