The feeling in my stomach could be compared to swallowing an enormous boulder; the only thing my mind could process was how this could even be possible after all the hard work I put in for two years. I was extremely perplexed how my coach could sit there and tell me that rather than being a varsity starter I had been replaced by a younger player with my same name. Both of us were determined but when deciding who would be the best option others would agree that I was the best choice. However, when it comes to my soccer coach the main factors that determined who got the starting position were either political statics or what team you were on for club soccer.
As I made the transition from JV up to varsity I had to struggle with no longer being
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I hyper-focused on the thought that if I was able to lose a starting position to someone who is two years younger than me, then that automatically made me a failure. I tried to ignore this sense of disappointment but it gradually got more difficult for me to even name one good thing about myself. While most people don’t understand why not being a varsity starter mentally affected me so much, it's important to remember that I had gone almost fifteen years of my life relying on my performance in soccer and school to establish whether I succeeded or not. Whenever I communicated with my coach he would always say I am doing great and that I would get more playing time the next game. However, this never happened. I continuously counted down the time when I could go in, and if I did go in, any mistake would penalize me. If I was in the game for only ten seconds and I was not communicating loud enough I would get less playing time the next game. My coach was a difficult person to understand and he favored a lot of people depending on their team label as a soccer player. Eventually after spairling into stress and not having balance in my life I started talking to my friends and