Originally Posted by
Darrell KSR
My son plays his last soccer game tomorrow, a Conference Tournament championship game. It will conclude 20 years of organized soccer for him.
During that time, he has probably averaged 40 to 50 games a year. Beginning when he was about 8 years old, he began traveling and that's when I began putting miles on my car, renting cars, and leaving out of suitcases and hotels for tournaments and such.
He has always been a very good player, recruited beginning when he was about six playing up 2 years, and then moving to competitive where they competed in tournaments with players a year older than them. Two of his teammates are professional soccer players now, one MSL, two of them play for their countries National team, one played for Kentucky , one played for South Carolina, two played for Wake Forest, etc. For some of those teams he was one of the stars. For others of them, he took a back seat, even changing positions depending upon the personnel. He has always sacrificed for the good of the team.
This year has been a bittersweet year for him. He is one of seven 5th year players on his team (very unusual for D3 athletics, which generally has 4 years to play 4 and no redshirting). All of the guys are very close friends
Three of them, including him, play the same position, center back . He has perhaps sacrificed more this season than any other by being the backup to the two starting center backs, both of whom made first team all conference this year and are really, really good. He worked so hard during the off season to improve his strength, stamina, and speed and did a really nice job of preparing for the season but has probably played the least amount he has played in his 5 years. Every other season one or both of the other center backs has become injured and thrust him into the starting position, but fortunately, they have both been very healthy this season.
His conference is in the second year of a two-year probationary period as a new conference split from a very large conference, and as a result, the tournament champion does not receive an automatic NCAA bid. It is pretty well accepted that their record, while pretty good, will not be good enough to receive an at large bid. So win or lose, tomorrow is it.
My cars and wallet will welcome the break. I suspect my son will not miss the 6:00 a.m. practices during the season where he practices for 2 hours and then goes to 8:00 a.m. class. Or the three a day practices they begin the season with that migrates to two a day in temperatures approaching 100° at the beginning of the season. Or even the long bus trips to South Texas and other places where he would miss weeks of school combined during the semester and have to make up school work.
But I will miss it so, so much.
Thanks to all of the great coaching he received and the great players who helped him along the way.
Good luck tomorrow, son. It has been a great, great ride. Thanks for letting me take that ride along with you.
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