Beep Beep! Beep Beep! The alarm bell goes off. It is 6 am on the 1st of August, 2016. First day of tryouts for my school's soccer team. I am inflated and drowning in nervousness. For the past two years of my high school life, I had missed tryouts, both times not knowing when they took place. Finally, with careful planning, the year I claimed my spot on a soccer team had finally come. Born the son of an ambitious and idealistic soccer coach, it didn't take me a long time to kick a soccer ball. From the age I learned to say "mama" and "baba," I had spent hours playing soccer outside on the streets of East Africa. Soccer became my language; I didn't have to talk to make friends. Just put the ball on the ground, and wonderful things would ensue. The creativity it supplied me, the freedom of expression it allowed me, the simplicity it taught me. Soccer was my relief of struggles hard and easy. It became more than a hobby. It became a characteristic. Often is it dangerous to be smitten to a game, a sport, to this level, but it didn't matter. Soccer also …show more content…
I stepped on the field, and instead of an uneven, rocky field, I saw turf. Instead of friendly faces smudged with mud and dirt, I saw strange ones with flowing blond and brown hair. Any connections I made with the sport I so much loved disintegrated in a space of minutes. But what created most discomfort was the competition. I felt I wasn't there to enjoy myself; I felt I couldn't follow my instincts. I was there to win a place, to compete with someone else for a squad number, to tussle with another for a spot. Thus, with too much pressure on my shoulders, I couldn't be me that day. Heck, I couldn't be me for the whole of tryouts. Looking at players that were much taller and stronger than me, I lost confidence in my ability and failed to express myself. So it wasn't surprising that, at the end of tryouts, my name wasn't on the team