Soccer_Tournamnet

Denis Yudin English 111X Instructor: Jay St. Vincent 01/26/08 Formal Essay #1 Soccer Tournament I went into my junior spring soccer season kind of sad, my past coach, wasn't going to be our team coach this year. But I didn’t felt sad about it, because I had tons of friends that were playing this year. One of the great things about soccer is that it is not a school-sanctioned sport. To me this is sad that I was able to play another season of soccer with my friends from Odessa and Ilichevsk without the normal High School rivalry between these schools. Year after year, the schools pulled pranks on each other, sometimes nothing big, but sometimes something big. I remember my freshman or sophomore year, when a few guys I knew went to Ilichevsk and painted their skylight in their commons. When the sun shined into the skylight, it reflected a big CHS onto the floor, talk about a cool prank, but hey they got a free vacation, but the school had to pay a ton of money to clean it. This season wasn't just any season though. We had a new coach, and we were also playing competitive soccer. What was competitive soccer' Well it's a lot different than our normal soccer. Instead of playing the local teams, such as Dinamo, Dnepr, and Spartak, we got to play in huge tournaments and against teams far away from home. The game was also a lot more intense; I remember the first game, against Dinamo’s team. It was totally different than anything I have seen, we were able to play at a college, and against a soon-to-be known rough team. We had started the game, and man these guys were violent. We started to retaliate, and my friend's dad was the center referee, his name is Dima. I sure would hate to be in his place, that's for sure. It didn't even notice how crazy soccer was this year until one of the Dinamo players spit at our coach's feet, and got tossed from the game. We soon learned to live with this violence, and we even participated in it more than anyone would probably admit to. A positive thing that resulted from all of the beatings we had received from the other teams was this. We deserved to be rewarded by being able to go to a big tournament. This is called the Dinamo Shootout. It is one of the largest tournaments in Ukraine. It is so popular in our Country, that many, many other teams participate. The motel, we stayed in, was occupied completely by out of state soccer teams. Well Sasha and I decided we would make a road trip out of our upcoming tournament. I remember seeing many of the other players still in class while we went around yelling in the halls before we left. Luckily, we entertained ourselves somehow, until we got to Dnepr, and something struck us, we had to buy water guns. So there we are, in City Market in Dnepr buying the best water guns we can. We fill them up and just start driving around and shooting everything, the whole way to Ilichevsk, we had to stop at nearly every store we saw for water. We pretty much just shot each other until we got into Nikolaev, when we pulled up to the second light, which happened to be red. There was a female across from us on my side that was about our age and her window was down. Sasha and I just laughed, the light turned green, we both shot her and I stepped on it. Time after time things like this happened, we got a bus full of school kids, probably 10 bikers, and I think I was flipped off at least 5 times. We ended up in Ilichevsk a little later than we expected, all those detours, about 30 minutes earlier than anyone else. We just pretty much crashed until everyone arrived, and then not long after they found out about our water guns, they went to Ilichevsk's City Market and got theirs. We must have really ticked off some of the people at that motel, I'm sure of that. I remember when Sasha and I were standing on the top level of the motel, and we bombed the motel doorway with two trash bags full of water. We had a game that night and went to the local college, this team was very good, and we ended up tying them. With all the daytime activities finished, we all went back to the motel, and got some well needed rest. However, my friend Sasha and myself decided to cause some mischief. We were at the motel, not roaming the streets and causing problems there. The motel had armed us with the most annoying weapon we could have, the telephone. Room after room, we kept calling and hanging up until about 12, when we went room to room when we found another weapon in our arsenal, the remote! We found out that all the TV's in the motel were the same, so we went window to window, peeking through the curtains, trying to turn on any TV possible, some people were ticked off at us. After many more hours of phone calls and TV fun, we eventually went to sleep. The next day we had a game against Dinamo, the team we think we hated more than any other team. Oh were we ready or what, we had taken tons of shots on the goalie, and running around crazy, I thought I was at my peak. Then we get to the sideline, and I found out that I don't get to start, I was angry, but I contained it. Eventually I got in, within 2 minutes of when I entered, there was a Dinamo guy coming down the field on my side, I charged him as hard as I could. I pounded the ball away, we had a huge collision, and my shoulder was a few inches lower than it should. The referee stopped the game and I got up and went to the sideline. Igor’s dad was there, he is a Doctor, and he told me that it was out of socket, but then it popped back in. So I was sitting on the sideline for a bit and my coach asked me how I felt, I said good and asked if I could get back in game, I said, "Sure, but in a bit." So I started stretching, and moved my arm about parallel with my shoulder and heard a noise that sounded like thunder to me. My shoulder was out again, and then it popped back in, that was extremely painful. The rest of the game I didn't get to play, which I guess was better for that kid, because I would of slammed my metal cleats into his skull. Later that day, we had another game, of course, it’s a tournament. My arm was throbbing flashes of pain like lightning ran down my arm, but I figured I could still drive. I had no clue how to get to where the next game was, so I had to follow our coach. Suddenly 2 more people crammed into my truck, so we had 4 people in the front of a small truck. Next thing I know, there are pedestrians trying to cross in front of me, but I kept going and ran 2 red lights. I am still confused on how I didn't get into a wreck. After all that it was pretty nice and calm, except for us calling and turning on TV's that night, we had one game the next day, ended up loosing it, then we started heading home. On the way home we stopped at every little spring and store possible, we had to fill up our water guns of course! Believe it or not on the way home I was flipped off twice as many times. The next season came, and very few of the players returned, I tried to e-mail a few of them, but never come into contact with them. Suddenly a lot of the people I had become great friends with seemed to have disappeared, how sad. For me it is now important to keep in contact with all my friends. I have learned a few lesions. One of those lesions is it is better to tell your parents about injuries after they happen before it happens again and you have to go to the Emergency Room and explain it there.