Sports memories: The playground athletes in grammar school

I wasn't always the best at everything that I did in sports. In fact, most of my life I was not the best person on any team I was on. The only exception to this would be the last 3 years of my high school soccer performance where there was no doubt that I was the best on my team. I was the best on any team that we faced as well. Then I went to college for free thinking that this domination would continue but it didn't. The talent pool in college was immense and I got rattled and rarely even played because I couldn't get my head in the game and never had a chance to shine. As far as being "rattled" is concerned, this is a very real part of the game and it is something that while I didn't realize it, is a part of sports even as a kid. If you can't get your "head in the game" you aren't going to be capable of being good at it.

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_{if you believe you can't do well, you wont do well}

before I run too much off topic I want to talk about the time in my life that I first started to realize that confidence is such a big part of the game. I was around 11 years old and was in grammar school like everyone else is at that time.

Prior to that we had all played sports, but it was the kind where everyone is just gathered around kicking one another in the legs and the parents think it is funny and the coaches try to get us to learn some skills in the meantime. The games are not competitive and I recall being told that at the really young age, nobody even officially records the score.

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Now during this time I think the coaches just kind of really lost their minds trying to convince us not to just play within a couple of feet of eachother. All of us would just run for the ball no matter where it was. Convincing children to seek out a position for a pass is almost impossible because they idea of being open for a pass and being in a good position just doesn't register with kids until they are older.

I don't think that it really matter to us whether someone was good or not but even though I am dealing with this instance being more than 30 years old. I can still remember that there were certain people that had certain attributes, even at 11 years old that made us want certain people on our team. I remember their names even though it has been many decades since I spoke to any of these people.

Ryan and Paul were FAST. I mean really fast. For whatever reason they had become significantly faster than the rest of us and anytime there was a running race it was just kind of known that the winner of this race was going to be one of these two. Paul had almost non existent kicking skills but honestly, he didn't need them. If he could get on a wing and manage to stay onside you could launch the ball from almost anywhere and he would beat any defender to that position. So our strategy with him was to just play the ball to him from waaaay back and see if he could get to the ball before the keeper. Seeing as how the strategy at 11 years old where I was wasn't very good, normally he would get there before the keeper. The problem was he would often miss while shooting at an open goal.

Ryan was really fast also, but not as fast as Paul. We had Ryan play the right wing and once we were old enough and could convince players that getting to open space was more important that rushing the ball, Ryan could make it to a corner before the defender easily. Ryan than usually would just try to hang on to the ball long enough for the rest of us to get to the front lines and then cross it in. Crosses, even at that point in our lives were quite low percentage but we got enough of them to win most of our games.

Then there was Brad

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The above image is not Brad. I have no idea who that is.

Brad was a big boy, that for sure. He would get picked on here and there for being fat but when he was in goal, nobody made fun of him. Despite his size and that he really struggled with cardio even at a young age, Brad could move when he needed to. He also had wonderful vision for a keeper at such a young age. We were at a time when most keepers or "goalies" as we tend to call them in the states were concerned only with protecting the goal, Brad was able to exist as a back line defender and someone to pass the ball to as well. This strategy worked really well against most other youth teams because the offense of the opposition and even their mid and defense would "freak out" when the ball ended up near our keeper thinking that it was a goal opportunity. What they didn't realize was that Brad was quite good with his feet and this was intentional. Remember Paul and Ryan? Well they would wait patiently at the half field line while the defense frantically went up for what they thought was a goal and Paul and Ryan would be in the line like sprinters waiting for Brad to launch the ball upfield. Many times they would be the only two on the opposition's side of the field and between the two of them, they scored many goals like this.

This would not have been possible without Brad and his extremely powerful kick for his age. Brad didn't really need to be very good at much else, but he was very good at that.

The most important member of the team was Joel. I am sure that Paul, Brad, and Ryan all remember Joel too.

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Again, that is not Joel. I only vaguely remember what Joel looked like but I do remember he was thought as being very good-looking, and he also commanded respect both on and off the field. Joel was our center forward and he wasn't a greedy player at all. All the other players looked up to him and would listen to his commands as our captain. He had a way of commanding the rest of the team without bullying any of us. Even at that young age you could tell that the rest of us really looked up to Joel and were in a way, kind of looking for his approval. These strategies that we developed wouldn't have happened without Joel since it was he who had the "vision" to notice that these kind of things would work. The downside of being a leader like Joel was that if he was ever bested on the field by an opponent it would kind of demoralize all of us - kind of like Hector being defeated by Achilles really destroyed the Trojan army's morale.

Joel was unphase-able though. He was just a walking, talking, confidence machine and now when I look back, Joel wasn't even the best player on the team, he just believed that he was and this transcended to his performance on the field. For people that don't play sports competitively, they probably don't understand how absolutely important this confidence is and Joel had it in spades.

So where was I during all of this? This is MY memory after all. Well this was actually a time in my life where I hadn't yet found my legs, or my confidence. I was normally positioned on the left somewhere because I could play with both my right and left feet, which was rare at the time. However, i held myself back because I didn't yet have faith in my own abilities and would normally pass the ball off to Joel, Ryan, or Paul rather than try to get around defenders on my own.

Joel actually helped me to get past that and he would encourage me to go for it and I am really thankful that I ever met this guy. He gave me that push that I needed to believe in myself and because of that, I tried it and found out that yes, I actually can get around most defenders. Without Joel (and Paul, Brad, and Ryan) I don't think I would have ever had the guts to try to excel at this sport the way that I did and since i went on to become MUCH better at the game than any of them and get an athletic scholarship because of it, I am extremely grateful that I just happened to end up on the same team as them.

There are so many things that happen to affect how good we end up in a sport and its little things like this that really make me smile. Who knows where I would have ended up without having accidentally ended up on a team with these 3 guys?