Personal Statement
I fell in love with soccer when I was 11 yrs old. I wasn’t introduced to soccer as a young kid and didn’t have an opportunity to play in a competitive league as a young kid. I grew up playing in Upward soccer, and soccer was a tool to teach Christian values. I loved my coaches and my teammates. I wasn’t a good soccer player then, but I had a great deal of fun. I didn’t start to play competitive soccer until I was 9. I had a great soccer coach who loved soccer and brought that attitude to the team every practice and every game. My youth coach helped me to develop a love of soccer and helped me train vigorously and he pushed me. He gave me the confidence to want to compete against the best players in Texas. He encouraged me to try out for ODP. I made the team and after that experience that is when I fell in love with soccer. The competition and the camaraderie was everything I was looking for. I do not have any brothers but soccer provided me with a brotherhood. The experience of making the ODP team pushed me to strive for greatness. Playing against very good players pushed me to get better. It was this experience that made me want to be a worker. I knew that with hard work and thousands of touches every single day, that I could get better.
In the course of my playing career, I believed that my goal was always to try to beat the guy in front of me. I worked hard working on my dribbling, my shooting, and passing. I applied this my work ethic to my school work as well. I put the time in and believed that the hard work would pay off. The hard work has paid off and has helped me to become the student and the soccer player that I am today. What I have learned from soccer helps me everyday of my life. Soccer has helped me to learn to deal with the highs and lows. It has helped me understand that you can prepare to make the right pass, or dribble move or shot and that it may not turn out exactly as you had planned, even with the best of intentions. What I have learned is that you need to be able to move on to the next second, the next moment in time…. On to the next play. This has been a great metaphor for life. Life is always about the next second the next moment and the ability to turn the next page. I am so grateful to the life lessons that soccer has taught me. What I have come to realize is that I was always been in competition with myself to see how great I can become and that it will be a never ending journey.
