Another Football Season Has Begun

In an effort to cling to my rapidly-fading youth, I've recently started another athletic endeavor - playing organized, competitive soccer at the University of Louisville. First the good news - my team is 3-0 and appear to be the best team in our very competitive league so far. The bad news is.....I probably don't belong on a team this good. It's been a tremendous lesson in humility and a learning experience for me. Every player on my team has lengthy experience playing competitive soccer. At least 1/3 of my team played soccer in college. As in....varsity soccer. One of our guys played for one of the top teams in the ACC conference. Another starred on the #8-ranked high school team in America. To my knowledge, everyone on my team played either in high school or in the Asian or European club system and has 15+ years of experience playing the game at a competitive level.

And then there is me......I kicked a football for the first time in May 2006. Yes, I call it football because that's what it is to 99.9% of the world. Americans play soccer - I play football. Anyhow, my high school girlfriend of four years played soccer for years. Her sisters all played soccer. Her father was (and I believe still is) a high school soccer coach. Despite being around this, I HATED the game. I mean, despised it. I didn't really understand it and I was naive and ignorant. However, a few years ago I started to become more interested. I was traveling a little internationally and making lots of non-American friends. I became friends with an English guy who played club football for Watford; a team now playing in the highest level of English Premier League football. I also began working on a Master's degree in Sport Management, studying under an extremely well-traveled professor and learning a ton about the game. I also fell in love with Fenerbahce Istanbul......the greatest club in Turkish Football.

So now, I am hooked. I can't get enough of football. At age 30, I'm 25 years behind where I should be., but I am desperate to improve. I have become a football sponge, trying to absorb as much as I can to improve my game. There are very few things that I honestly find as enjoyable as playing and watching football. The problem is.......I stink. Ok, To be honest, for a guy that has been playing football for five months, I'm probably pretty darn good. But compared to the players I am playing against, I stink. My footwork is a bit slow. My tackles can be sloppy. My chip passes are a bit flat. I'm too reliant on my right foot. But I feel like a kid when I am playing. No 30-year-old man should feel this way about a sport that he is just learning to play, but I do.

This past summer, desperate to learn to play, I organized some pick-up games around Louisville. Thinking I would be lucky to field one decent team, I had to turn people away. We had an international buffet of players coming to play each week. We had every level of talent from former college stars to.....well, me. But it worked. I was getting my tail kicked at times, but I improved. A lot. There is more of a discrepancy from where I can go as opposed to where I've come from, but I'm working on it.

So this brings me to my current plight. Several weeks ago, I was contacted about playing organized, competitive soccer at Louisville. I decided to do it. Three games into the season, we're 3-0 and playing at world-class facilities. Wednesday night we played at Segell Stadium, the brand new Louisville lacrosse stadium on campus. The FieldTurf surface of the pitch cost more than my house and two cars combined. Last night we played at Trager Stadium, pictured above. Trager Stadium is arguably the best field hockey stadium in America. It's been open only a few years, and has already played host to two NCAA National Championship games on National TV. And there I was, playing football on the same field. It was 35 degrees, windy, and a nice mix of rain/snow in the air when we took the pitch. Did I score a goal last night? No. Did I make a game-saving tackle? No. The goal-scoring was left to the guys who played for top-ranked college and high school teams. But I was there, a guy who hated football for most of his life and my team is 3-0 despite my weaknesses on the pitch. Not bad for a guy who first kicked a football five months ago...