The kids, myself included, will wait patiently for the school day to reach it's end. After staring at a clock for those six hours, nothing could make us feel better than to start the real part of the day... the real reason that anyone showed up to school this morning-the first training session. We'll start as quickly as we can run to the field after school. We will stop playing when we can't see the ball.
Most kids are excited just to be able to play with a real ball. The summer was spent juggling and dribbling for countless hours each day using as big of a grapefruit as we could find. Usually our fruits were donated to us by the vendors on the streets. That way, if we have success this season they can feel like they contributed. As poor as we are, as bad a life we live, nobody is stingy when words of soccer are spoken.
One week later
My muscles ache. I'm not sure if this pain will heal before the season is over. My friends and teammates are feeling the same, if not worse, pain as well. The week was filled with activities with preparation for the season in mind. Running through the streets of town for hours after school each day reaped benefits for some who were able to pull through it. Others aren't so fortunate. My close friend Juan cut his foot open on a shard of glass while running by the broken window of the Laundromat... the most recent victim of the neighborhood gang. Most days, we've run for 2 hours before returning to the field to being our ball skills training.
On the few nights that it has rained, the soccer players have rejoiced. The refreshing rain provides us with drinking water for the next day's practice. The practices are challenging, but everyone is happy that the time has come. For us here, the days go by with nothing but soccer in our heads. Looking forward to the contests we'll be having next week with teams from the other towns is the common day-dream during school. All of our teachers know that the material they're trying to enlighten us with doesn't even come close to comprehension. They know that we're far too engulfed in our dreams of soccer. Most of them either don't care, or have given up trying to fight it. In fact, some days, we'll catch some of the professors dreaming themselves about the potential the upcoming season has.
One week later
Today my team had it's first game. Unfortunately, through all of the day-dreaming, all of the high hopes, all of the potential, all of the hard work... we were defeated today by our neighboring town. We walked back into town not as the celebrities that we were before the game earlier today, but as losers. We were no longer a team so much as a group of kids that let their people down. I'm one of the lucky ones... my parents don't refuse to speak to me.
The team simply didn't play well today. I think some may have been too nervous and couldn't handle the pressure. Others might have been hurting still from the previous week's practices. Still others, like myself, just didn't make the right choices. As revenge is sweet we still have hope for the season... but now the town is filled with a haze of despair. The feeling is felt all around, by everyone. It's hard to say how much work tomorrow's practice will hold. Our coach is usually unpredictable at times like this. He, of course, feels the worst right now. I'm sure he takes most of the blame for today's loss. He won't sleep tonight, only lie awake and ponder how he could've done differently to avoid the failure and humiliation of today. My only hope is that we can rebound from today with grace and finish the season respectably this year. For the sake of the town, the players, the coaches, and the parents.
This is how it is in other parts of the world. Today we lost... and it sucked. But I suppose it could have been worse.
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