Personal Essay

Brrrp!! The whistle echoed in the field and the soccer game was declared over. We had won! We had made it to the playoffs! The score was one to zero in sudden death overtime. The other team, from Riverside, kept shooting the ball at our net yet by some miracle, we ended up with the goal. We erupted into screams and cheers. Besides us screaming, everything else and everyone else was dead silent. We were playing at Riverside, so we were not the home team. All of their fans and the players were in shock, but we didn’t care. We had won and that was all that mattered. Within all of this excitement and celebration, I noticed a small sting of pain in my left knee. I made nothing of it and continued to celebrate.

            The next morning the small sting became a large shooting pain. I iced my left knee and hoped it would be okay. The following day was game day again. The game was to be held at Santa Maria, a total of about three hours from Inglewood.  While on the bus, I did everything possible to keep my knee from as much pain as possible. I kept my left knee propped up and did my best to resist the urge to bend it. When our team finally reached our destination, I put my knee down. As I got of the bus, an explosion of sharp pain tortured my knee. I hoped that somehow I would be able to get through the game.

            Before every game, my team always stretches. Stretching warms up your muscles and prevents cramps. However, I was finding stretching to be harder than usual. I didn’t have time to wonder about that because the game was minutes from starting and I couldn’t risk getting any other injuries. For the first forty minutes of the game, I put forth major effort. Unfortunately my injury prevented me from doing my best. I could see this when I tried to sprint. I had to tense my jay and squeeze my fist to be able to resist the pain with every stride I took. Then around the last five minutes of the first half, everything changed. One of the girls from the other team collided with me and her leg hit my knee with major force. I collapsed to the ground. The pain was unbearable; tears of anger and disappointment streamed down my face. I had to face the fact that I would not be able to make it through the game. This time when the final whistle blew it was a sound of defeat, but what hurt the most was that I did not finish the game. Disappointment sucks. However, I understood nothing could be done to change what happened. I guess you win some and you loose some.