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  • Essay / Personal Writing: Improving My Talent as a Football Player

    Sitting between posts is one of the loneliest moments accompanied by relief. It's not my favorite position on the field; I would much rather be with the swarm on the other side. The current complication is no longer in my control, but I am dealing with it. He could come back at any time. When it does, my adrenaline starts to surge, my heart races. He is coming towards me, entering my territory. I confront the invader. Turning my chair aside, he pushes the ball towards me, over and over again. The only thing that concerns me is the defense. Focusing on the ball continually being pushed into the side of my wheelchair, I don't realize what's happening until my side hits the ground. All I know is that I stopped him from scoring a goal. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay I loved playing goalkeeper on my powerhouse soccer team, the Piranhas. My coach nicknamed me “the wall” because nothing escaped me. Playing as a goalkeeper is extremely stressful. When the other team scores against me, I automatically blame myself for our team's loss, even if there is another defender. After my chair tipped over during that game, I became an even more fearful athlete than I already was when I was a shy ten-year-old. I stopped taking risks and retreated into my shell more often. Unrelated to my shyness, our team began to fall apart. Our father's coach resigned and we received training under a stranger. Talented teammates and friends of mine have moved away or stopped coming to practice. Overwhelmed by outside activities, I stopped playing football myself. Football is extremely important to me, but I had other obligations to fulfill. Eventually, the Piranhas took a break. Without playing football, I didn't have a small community of people with whom I could identify and share a passion. My weekends no longer consisted of training with friends. I no longer had a skill I could share with people they had never heard of. I couldn't invite my friends to training or matches. I always stayed in my shell. After almost two years of not playing football, the Piranhas returned with our original coach, but two of our former members had passed away and others chose not to return. Coming back to football, I was still shy. I had to adapt to a different wheelchair to play and learn new skills that other advanced players on the team had already mastered years before me. I was completely out of practice; I felt like a new player learning football for the first time. The skills I had to learn are called spin kicks. There are ninety degree spin kicks performed by turning your chair sideways and swinging it at a ninety degree angle to hit the ball. It's quite simple and quickly mastered. The other is a full kick. For example, as the ball rolls to my side, I roll backwards parallel to the direction of the ball, rotate my chair in a full circle to the left, and "hit" the ball as it arrives from the other side. This ensures that the ball will travel further, with more force and more speed. At first I was going around in circles and missing ball after ball. I'll hit some randomly with luck. Eventually I started running out with shorter margins. I started returning the balls to the sender. I was able to.