« Choose the school that fits | Main | Arts and Things.... »
November 29, 2005
On and off the field
In college, the soccer team felt like an extension of my family. Being an only child I have never had sisters and now they seemed to come from all over the country. We practiced hard, won games, lost games, studied together, laughed a lot, sang on the bus in a not-so-good harmony, listened to one another, learned from each other, and without knowing it, we were all growing the whole time. (Of course some were growing more than others -aka "freshman 15"!)
I seemed to be surrounded by soccer, but really it was much more than just a sport. We had a coach who really cared about our well being. Some of us had supportive families who celebrated our every success. But we also had one another and it felt like small groups of our larger group grew closer each day. My roommate played soccer, my new best friend played soccer, and for a few months it was all I knew.
Then my friendships blossomed and soon I was meeting new friends and developing rich friendships outside of this safe niche. In college your friendships seem to branch out like a great oak tree, and then you realize that you feel part of this good, sometimes great, place. The place is called college and sometimes accidentally (hopefully not in front of your Mom) "home". It's the place where you learn how to really learn, grow in ways you never imagined, and leave feeling like you just might be able to change the world you are headed out into.
As a result of this good experience, of course, I became nostalgic and sentimental during my senior year. Off the field the seniors and our closest underclassmen friends found ourselves talking late into the night asking each other important questions, like, "What will we be when we grow up?” On the field, each game edged many of us closer to the last game of our "soccer careers" - for me, the one that started back in second grade.
In my teammates, I had found different backgrounds, different ways of thinking, fantastic humor, unimaginable strength, unending courage, oh yah, and also scored some goals and won some games along the way. I found friends and mentors on the field and in the classroom. On long bus trips, one friend always helped me with my sociology homework, another with my communication papers, another with all my science classes, and another made all of us laugh the whole time. During tough games I loved yelling my best friend's names on the soccer field just as much as I loved playing the game itself.
Along the way, my teammates and I lost a friend and a teammate, one sunny February day, and it changed us all. Our lives were different from then on and a natural closeness developed on our team that seemed to help us, most of us barely past 20, see beyond ourselves.
All the lessons on and off the field that my friends and I learned seemed to come full circle, and I learned more lessons in those four years than I ever knew college would offer to me. That final game of my college soccer days did in fact come and go, full of anticipation and ending with tears. Even though it was sad to let it go, I had the memories both on and off the field, and I still have them today.
PS: Add your comments! What great memories do you have that include your high school friends, either on or off the field?
Posted by esc8 at November 29, 2005 02:34 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.case.edu/admission/mt-tb.cgi/4190