Long Distance Call | tayley ✓

1 | Big Game

[Taylor]

This was the final game of my high school soccer career. The crowd sounded louder than it typically did.

My hands shook with nervousness. If we won this game, we'd be the state champions. This was far bigger than any other game I had ever been involved in.

I brought the straps of my goalkeeper gloves around my wrists and shook my hands out as if that could assist me in calming down. It didn't. I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I twisted my body to see who it was, I discovered it was my friend, Josh.

"You alright, man?" he asked and placed a hand upon my shoulder. I gave him a nod of my head, but anyone could have been able to tell I was far from fine.

With him being my friend, and knowing me better than most people did, he gave me an expression that said that he knew I was full of shit.

"It's gonna be alright, T. It's one game. You block the kicks, like you always do. You've got this," Josh assured me. I ran a gloved hand through my curly locks.

It wasn't that I wanted to win this for myself. I mean, yeah, of course I wanted to win. I love this sport, and continuing it is a dream of mine. But the thing is; the coach had an attitude that said if I did poorly, everyone would. There was constantly this pressure that was put on me to do better than everyone else. That pressure was put on by my teammates, my coach, my parents. Everyone wanted me to be the best. But they never checked to see how I felt. Maybe I was okay with being second best.

"Alright guys. It's time to go out there. C'mon," my coach's deep voice echoed through our locker room. Thanks to Josh's short, yet helpful speech, I was not as nervous as I had been moments before. I stood up, adjusting my black socks.

All together, the team rushed out, led by me. I held a hand up in a victorious manner, listening to the crowd booming with both cheers and jeers. We were directed to our bench by one of the game's officials. We all took our usual places on the bench.

The opposing team made their way out, led by someone I pretended to despise, though him and I were far from enemies, having been friends since our youth. How we met is a funny story, that my mother still enjoys telling whenever our families are together.

What happened was in kindergarten, during recess, he had been using the only functioning swing. He was a bit of a bully, I believe. Nobody wanted to stand up to him, so little me stepped up, and demanded he get off. He did so, only to kick me in the shin. He got in trouble, we were both sent to the principal, and were forced to hug each other and be nice. I'm not sure how that resulted in the two of us being best friends, but it did. Anyway, that person was my friend Jeremy.

The first half of the game was a boring one. I had barely done anything. I blocked a few shots at the goal, but all of them were easy to defend. Nothing too tough. The defense did a good job of keeping the ball away, for the most part.

The second half of the game was when things got a bit difficult. Josh had scored a goal, resulting in a brief celebration. This had sort of encouraged the opposing team, with them wishing to get back at us and even out the score.

In an attempt to tie the score once more, the players of the opposing team hurried over. Luckily, I was able to to block the shot that came my way. I was forced to dive to hit it away, but I blocked it with the palms of my hands, the ball falling to the green grass.

I took the soccer ball into my hands, and threw it over my head. A teammate of mine was the one to get it, and I was not bothered again.

Until twenty seconds later, that is. The opposite team was not about to give up without a fight. Both teams were near me, kicking it from player to player. It was tough for me to keep up, and I was short of breath with running back and forth; rushing to wherever the ball was.

After a whole lot of passing that left me breathless, they finally got the chance to score. The play was so orchestrated that I couldn't even beat myself up too much over allowing them to score. There was no way I could have saved the ball. One side of the stadium cheered once the score was evened up, while the opposite side booed.

After some more of that intense playing, they scored once more. Dirt and grass stains covered my blue and white uniform and the stains also covered the skin of my legs that was visible. From a tough dive that luckily resulted in blocking the ball, my knee was a combination of both red and green. The green being courtesy of the green grass, the red there all thanks to my skin rubbing against the hard ground. It hurt, but not so much where I was at the point of not being able to play.

My coach called a timeout. I took a long sip from my bottle of Gatorade, drinking at least half of the flavored drink while the coach went on and on about some cliché stuff. I can recall him saying "we've got this" and "it's not over yet!"

Josh walked to me, a grass stain visible on his right cheek. This had occurred due to a nasty fall, where he'd been pushed by an opposing player. He rested the side of his head against my shoulder. I brought a strong arm around him.

"You're doing good out there, bud," he praised me. I shrugged, causing for him to raise his head from my shoulder. I hadn't felt as though I had done too great out there. I instead felt like I had let too many shots pass me, even though the opposing team had only been able to score two goals. But just one goal was too many for me.

We head back out to the field, and I guess that my coach's talk fueled my team to improve. I wouldn't really know, I didn't pay much attention to his words. But my teammates were able to tie the score after less than two minutes after returning to the field.

The score was tied at two to two. I'm not sure if our offense did a good job of keeping the ball over there, or if the defense did a good job of not allowing the other team passed them, but either way, someone was doing good. And soon, we scored yet another goal.

Not much time was remaining at that point, so when our team scored, it was a big deal. With seconds remaining, the opposing team made a last second attempt at tying the game. They  took a shot, though the ball flew over the goal. They came up short, resulting in our victory.

I ran from my spot inside the goal, rushing over to Josh. He met me, and we came together for an embrace. We won. Part of me couldn't believe the victory, but we did it.