My losing season

It’s the middle of October in 1988 and I’m suited up in my soccer cleats and uniform, standing a dozen yards or so from the goal at our end of the field. I’m seventeen years old, and playing in one of the last games I’ll ever play for my high school team.

Bear in mind that we’re in central Georgia, so it’s still pretty hot. I kick the ground and stir up a small cloud of dust, and bounce on the balls of my feet a little as I try to anticipate whether the scrum of players on the other side of the field are about to head in my direction.

We’re down three goals to one, but for the moment I’m completely oblivious to that fact. Because we have plenty of time left to come back, and I know in my heart of hearts that we can. All we need to do is take the ball from the other team here, and score a goal there, and then do it again – and then again – and we win the game. Right?

I was so confident this would happen, despite the numbers I could see on the scoreboard, despite the time we had left to play. 

Still, I really, really believed we could. Which was a big difference from the way I felt standing in the same place, at the same point in the season, the year before…

I’m wearing the same cleats, the same uniform. While the team we’re playing is different, everything else is the same – except for the way I feel.

I’ve only been playing on the team for a couple of months, after one of our coaches asked me to join. Apparently we didn’t have quite enough players to field a team without substitutes, so our coaches really needed bodies, and quickly.

The only problem was, I hadn’t played soccer since I was a little kid, on a YMCA youth rec league team. And back then, I wasn’t exactly an alert, aggressive playing-on-the-tips-of-my-toes player – I was more the daydreaming, playing-in-the-dandelions kind.

But I tried to learn again, after all those years. I spent practices doing drills, learning how to dribble the ball with the sides of my feet, at first pretty badly. Then, after a while, I got better. Still not good, but better.

I don’t know how much I helped – or even if I helped at all – because even though I played as hard as I could, we lost most of our games. A lot of those weren’t even close; the few we did, we scratched out 1-0 or 2-1 or 3-2 – which for us, were miracles.

Most of the rest of the time, though, we didn’t come close to winning. We got beat bad. Which doesn’t make you feel very good when you walk off the field, you know?

Of course, one loss isn’t so bad, or even two. But when three becomes four becomes five in a row, you start to feel like it’s all impossible.

The next year, though, a new coach took over our team. One who taught us new ways to play, for sure, but encouraged us – really for the first time – to think about ourselves in a different way. 

We practiced all summer and by the time the school year started, we were in shape and our skills were sharp. We could dribble, we could pass, we could steal from an opposing player, sneakily and quickly. And because we’d been running our tails off all summer, we were in better condition than we’d ever been (and likely ever would be again!).

The biggest difference from the year before, though, was that we believed we were good. That we hadn’t lost before we’d even taken the field, that we had a shot at winning.

Once, in the middle of a game, it hit me out of the blue. Inside my head, I realized I was talking with myself, understanding that I really believed we could win and how different that felt. There was no doubt in my mind we could do it; it was just a matter of a little time.

And… we did! Our first game, and then our second. And then our third. We all realized we weren’t hopeless, this wasn’t going to be just another losing season. That we could actually win, that something good was within our grasp.

It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about that time in my life, which until recently has seemed to drift back into the fog of my memory, filed away forever.

But I’ve been thinking about it a lot more (very!) recently, because I remember what it felt like to think everything was hopeless — and then to realize it’s not. That, in fact, that’s the farthest thing from the truth.

I know many of us are being challenged right now, maybe in ways we never thought we would. I have a parent who’s very ill; maybe you’ve lost a job, or a partner, or are dealing with the struggles of children growing up and moving on. (Or something else entirely.)

I wish I had a magic wand, but I don’t. So the only thing I know to do is just to keep going, keep getting out on the field, and keep practicing. Because sometimes, things really do turn around.

As always, I hope you’ve had a great week and gotten in some great runs — keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell