My Personal Connection To Sports
Growing up, I was not really viewed as an athletic kid. However, my brother has always been a sports fanatic and played soccer and basketball. It was him who influenced my sports choice as I started taking part in those sports but not on a serious level but rather just played for fun and fooling around most of the time. At the time, I was very much unfit and inactive. It wasn’t until 8th grade where my friend persuaded me to play competitive soccer for the school. I’d doubted my abilities to play for the school due to being unfit and lack of skills at the sport. Yet, I’d tried out anyways and was cut the next day.
Over the summer before high school begins, my friends and I would train every day extensively. Before the summer I weighed roughly 175 pounds at the height of 4’11 and that my doctor told me I weighed too much for my height. However, over the summer I had a growth spurt which I grew to around 5’4 and lost roughly 50 pounds 6 months later. Soccer in a way made me change my habits to become healthier in a way. My freshman year I tried out for the team and made the U19 team as a bench goalkeeper behind a senior keeper. It wasn’t until the last 3 games where I’ve got a chance to start in a game which showed that my hard work paid off as I’ve kept 3 clean sheets in the games I’ve started.
My passion for soccer didn’t grow until after I made it on the team, which I then started watching more of the sport to learn from the pros. I started becoming more interested in the Premier League as I went to a British school and was very much influenced by British culture. In a way, the sport has helped improve my social life as a lot of people in school had a common interest in soccer. Furthermore, I’ve made a lot of friends and built trust with my teammates over the 2 years where I understood the importance of teammates and friends. Playing in goal is the most difficult position psychologically as one mistake could be the difference between winning and losing since the goalkeeper is normally the last line of defense. Although I’ve made a couple of mistakes throughout my career, my teammates showed me what it was like to be cared for. Rather than being blamed at or being negatively viewed, my teammates actually help me recover and bounce back from those mistakes and become a better player. It shows me what it was like for someone to have my back and be there for me despite the mistakes I might’ve made.
After my first year, a local travel team noticed me who then gave me a chance which I performed well during a couple of tournaments in Vietnam. I was then fortunate enough to be invited to play in England and Norway as the starting goalkeeper for the U16 travel team despite my height being a lot shorter than other keepers. My performance in Europe was mediocre but it was the experience that really opened my eyes on the competition level which can be seen across the world and the talent pool that is available worldwide.
During my sophomore year, where I started in all games, my ankle was getting injured a lot to a point where I can’t even remember how many times I’ve sprained my ankle in a single month. The constant ankle sprains were caused due to me being reluctant and not giving my ankle sufficient time to recover and heal which inevitably caused a long term issue for me as my ankle ligaments are a lot weaker. This was throughout the whole season and the constant sprain was just too much for me to deal with that I’ve decided to take a year of sports and focus more on working on my ankle strength.
Another reason why I stopped playing soccer is that I’ve come to an acknowledgment that making it pro would be extremely difficult. As a result, I’ve decided not to pursue the idea of going pro. However, I’ve always wanted to be involved in the sports industry one way or another. That’s why my new passion after realizing I won’t make it pro was to be either a scout for a professional NBA team, scout report writer for college and high school students or a sports journalist. My goal is to be a reputable writer who writes about the stories of young athletes and make their journeys known.
My passion to be involved in the sports industry really originally came from me playing sports as a player where soccer pretty much grew onto me and that my high school life revolves mostly around soccer. My future job was a unanimous choice as I’ve decided in my early high school years that I would be involved in the sports industry one way or the other.
