The Game of Life

By S. Gould

           I’ve always been an athletic and competitive person.  I enjoy pitting myself against my competitors and strategizing with my teammates on how we’re going to win whatever game we happen to be playing.  Soccer however, is my first love. I've been playing soccer since I was able to walk. My older sister taught me a lot about soccer.  To me soccer isn’t just a game about winning and losing...its about life.

            Every time I step onto the soccer field with my 10 other teammates we need be able to make quick and smart decisions under pressure and work together as a team.              We had some victories on the Varsity Girls Soccer Team this year, yeah! I’ll be the first to admit, it’s fun to win! Unfortunately, no one wins all of the time.

 There were times during the season this year on the Varsity Girls Soccer team where we felt like we should just give up. We went through some tough losses. All the teams we played wanted to win just as badly as we did. When the season started off badly we started to get a little discouraged but didn’t give up.

            With life these days, young people sometimes think that what they are going through is something so bad that they could kill someone or even or want to kill themselves. But no matter what you’re going through you can’t cave in to despair.  If you allow yourself to think for a moment that everyday is worse than the one before, you have nothing to look forward to.  Just because yesterday ended badly doesn’t mean that today has to be the same. If you allow yourself to think that then you’ve lost the game before you’ve even played.

            When it’s soccer season I wake everyday with a sense of anticipation knowing even if I lost yesterday, today is a new day and I have an opportunity to win.  I actually say to myself, “Today we’re not going to get beaten, we’re going to win!”  I try to take the same approach to life.  I never know exactly what is going to happen on the soccer field on any given day, but I’m ready to win anyway!  I never know what life is going to bring me but whatever it is I’m ready to win and you should be too.