My “Best” Day in “Sports”

By Grace Schmidhauser
I waddled onto the vast field, prepared for battle, equipped in my armor consisting of oversized knee pads, shin pads, tiny cleats, and of course, my Marble Falls Girl’s soccer jersey. I was 4 years old and approximately four feet and two inches tall, but nevertheless extremely determined. I was ready to WIN, against all odds, no matter what. Five goals were to be scored, by me and nobody else. The other team was going to be demolished. Flashback to five minutes earlier- my hulking and somewhat buff leader, a retired Marble Falls High School football coach who now coached a band of fiery four year old girls kicking around a soccer ball with great ferocity, gave me a seemingly light hearted pump up speech intended to fire me up for the upcoming game. “You can do it, Grace! You can score FIVE goals if you want to!” He told me earnestly. “You can win this for us, let’s do it!”, he encouraged me. See, I had never scored a goal before, as I wasn’t exactly destined for the World Cup (The fact that I had to google what “that big soccer game thing” is proves just how athletically compelled I truly am), but this speech had me determined as ever. I was going to win! I was going to score FIVE WHOLE GOALS. I would be worshipped, the hero of the Marble Falls Youth Soccer League. So I marched onto the field, my strawberry blond pigtails flowing in the wind, ready to own that field.

And I succeeded, to a certain extent. I kicked that ball with all of the strength I could possibly conjure up in my miniscule feet, and managed to slip 3 goals past the other team’s similarly tiny goalie. The team had won, victory was ours! The other little girls high-fived each other in satisfaction, but my attitude was a little bit different. Instead of jumping up and down with glee, I was sobbing uncontrollably. I ran up to my mom, tears streaming down my cheeks, staring up at her utterly confused face. “Sweetie, what’s wrong? You won! You scored three whole goals!” She told me, still completely puzzled. How dare she? ‘Three whole goals’, a phrase that stung my ego to its core. I explained the obvious to her, that I was supposed to score not three measly goals, but FIVE glorious goals. I was devastated, convinced that I had sabotaged the team’s glory and failed my leader and my teammates. My coach was equally as puzzled at this inconsolable four year old child, and upon my mother explaining my dilemma, he attempted to explain to me that he didn’t mean that I literally had to score five goals, and that the three that I had made were perfectly respectable. I’m sure I continued to cry for a while after this, but I eventually settled down and recovered from this humiliating failure.

I didn’t pursue a career in sports, despite my obvious potential for athletic excellence, due to an extreme aversion to any sort of sweating, but my competitiveness has not faltered in the 12 years since this event occurred. This competitive energy has manifested in many different ways, whether it be in my grades, my musical interests, or beating my little brother in arm wrestling, and I’ve continued to be known to get violently fired up over pretty much anything, especially in conversations regarding feminism and social justice. It has worked against me on occasion, but as I’ve grown up I’ve tried to learn to use it as a positive tool to motivate myself to live up to my potential and work to reach my goals, and my competitiveness has definitely worked in my favor in many ways. I feel lucky to be passionate about things, a skill that my surprisingly athletic family has taught me through countless half-comprehensible sports analogies, along with endless support. I've learned never to settle for anything less than that fifth goal, whatever that may be, if that's what I really want. Passion is necessary for success in any area of life, whether it be in little league soccer or music or the classroom, and lessons can be learned in unlikely places, including but not limited to that god forsaken Marble Falls soccer field.