And that's exactly what we did. Nonetheless, 10 minutes after the second half, Quito scored a goal on us. We tried our best to turn the game around in the twenty minutes that we had left, but the ten minutes quickly became thirty, and before we knew it, the referee blew the whistle to announce what none of us wanted to hear: the end of the game.
We had lost.
My immediate reaction was to cry, but after a while I realized that the tears weren't worth it because the place we got didn't truly reflect what we had accomplished as a team.
On the first day of the tournament, two of our most skilled players, one of these being our captains, got injured and was unable to play for the majority of the championship. A week before leaving to SAAC, one of our best defenders broke her hip and couldn't even travel with us. Despite playing without some of them, however, we managed to make it all the way to the finals. What this taught us, or what it taught me at least, is that you can win a game with a good player, but to win a tournament you need a great team. And what we have is exactly that, a great team. If my four years in SAAC have taught me anything, it's that a teams most valuable asset is it's mental ability . This means fighting for every ball regardless of how tired you may be. It means having grit, determination, and perseverance. It means giving your 110% effort believing in your capabilities, and in your teams capabilities. To me, Chiara, our captain, genuinely exemplifies what it means to have a strong mental ability. She broke a ligament in her knee on the first day of the tournament, yet refused to not play on the second or third day, even though she could barely walk or stand up. She told herself that she was going to get better, and that she was going to play, and in our first game against quito, that's exactly what she did. The result? She scored a goal in the first 3 minutes of our first game against Quito. Talk about mental ability! One of the things Olienka, our coach, told us at the beginning of one of our games - and it really stuck to me - was that she may have taught us the tactics needed to learn how to play soccer, but once we were out in the field it was all us. It was our GAME, our BRAIN, and our TEAM, and I think that's what sums up this experience. We may have come in second place, but we managed to combine what we had learned during practice, together with our love for the sport, and our respect towards our team. For me, those three things put together reflect a lot more than what any first place trophy can reflect. | |