My Own Experience - A Preview

The sport for me is football. I don’t really know how it came to me. I used to go to the park with my parents every weekend when I was five or so, and my parents recalled that I would stick my face up to the green-painted, rust-stained steel fences that enclosed a five-a-side football field every day, eagerly peeking into a group of boys, a year or so older than me, kicking a rubber ball around frantically. I remember seeing a coach clad in a white compression shirt with black stripes trying to keep order; one moment he was kneeling down to tie a boy’s shoelaces, and the next he was tending to another who had come off the field with blood streaming down his face. 

I was intrigued.

Eventually, I convinced my parents to sign me up. My first session came quickly on a clement summer afternoon waning in a mist of pollution. I didn’t know a lot about the sport; having watched a few clips of Messi and Ronaldo with my dad desperately at home before the session, I was otherwise clueless. My first steps on the artificial pitch I’ve stared at for countless hours felt like a march of trepidation eagerly creeping up to me. I immediately began to size myself up with my colleagues; I was definitely one of the smallest in stature and among the least experienced. Coach knew I was clueless; I could sense that he was aware of my inexperience. When he called us all in, his eyes scanned the group of eager children, and when they landed on me, there was a knowing smile that seemed to say, “Don’t worry; we’ll get you there.” It was both intimidating and exhilarating. But eventually I settled, made a few friends, and started kicking a ball around just like the rest of them. If a little boy was peeking outside the green barricade, I would have seemed no different than the rest. Those sessions became routine. And eventually I found myself being called up to the elite squad for trials. I was overjoyed. 

My academy journey began at a medium-sized international club by the name of AKSIL FC. And it was from that point that things started turning up. At the start, I didn’t even know the club had an elite squad; all I could care about was my weekly AKS Sunday league performance. Sunday league seems so distant now, yet at that time it was a huge step up for me. I was definitely among the few shy role players in my team at that time, scared to expose myself even the slightest to the ball. That came in many forms, whether by hiding behind one of my few friends on that team whenever the ball came into possibility, or by acting ever so uninterested, hoping my teammates would give up on trying to get me involved. That was the case for a while; that is, until my dad decided he couldn’t watch on and started working with me on my technical ability. From simple cone drills to juggling sessions, I was getting better day by day. As soon as I knew it, I found myself dominating the very Sunday matches that had once felt so daunting. 

Good. Now what?

Being introduced to the elite squad was a big shock, at least to myself. Being rather at the top of my game in the Sunday league, the sudden uncovering of a level above me was rather surprising. I was a bench player again, in the second team. I was considered one of the players that barely scraped through. Coach barely paid attention to me. I couldn’t juggle close to the level my teammates were. My game was in an immature evolution of rapidity compared to the rest. I couldn’t pass properly, often berated by the coach for the inability to execute simple passing procedures. In games, I had minimal confidence, avoiding the ball most of the time. And it seemed like it was going to be like that for a while.

Then a global pandemic hit.

One thing I find that I am especially good at is making the most of any opportunity. While my parents scurried to settle ourselves for a hibernation within our apartment for who knows how long as districts after districts fell into lockdown, I began to gather myself. Lockdown can be seen as, and is often seen as, a drawback for many. Whether it be their career progression, their relationships, or even their sport careers. It is perceived as a halt, a temporary pause to life. You sit in your house, with your family or alone, and stare out at a world in a scope ever so foreign. No more transport to school, no more transit to work. No more grocery shopping, no more family outings. And for some, no more sports. You seem ever so impotent and feeble, and ever so irrelevant. 

It’s terrible.

But what can we make of it? The most we can do is to accept it, and take advantage of what, amidst the absence, we gain from it. And for me, I had a lot of spare time on my hands. So I picked up my football. A few days after our condominium eventually received the confinement, and a few days after I got a bit of rest, I asked my dad to come with me downstairs to train. I picked out my best boots suitable for a rough surface, and we went on to the concrete patio, found a nice street lamp amidst the wintry spring night that would otherwise be overflowing with rush hour traffic and returning students, and stated the juggle the football. We did this for a few days, for a week, and eventually every day. It was a routine. It was peace amidst a quiet chaos.

Eventually, by the time the pandemic took the massive toll on mankind, and the new normal staggered its way out for the old normal, I was increasingly eager to showcase my progress throughout these few months. My first sessions back proved my confidence, earning myself the position of a regular starter in the span of two training sessions.

And yet this pattern of climbing the mountain and finding myself under another mountain seems everlasting. I know that eventually, either I will give in, or I will arrive at the final mountain for me to climb—and that is the pedestal.