oh dear! more of sam's rants are here

little writinf thing about expectations & achievements

when i started competitive soccer i wasn't all that good. i made it over a few girls, but if i'm being frank, it's only because there were so little girls to cut from the team. i knew i wasn't a very valuable player and i was okay with that because of my little experience.

on my team, there was an award system. every game, two or three players were chosen for doing something right during the game. if you were chosen, you received a patch. every player would get a patch before any other player could get a second one. at the time, again, i wasn't very skilled. i understood why i was always the last to get a patch.

the next season, i had a different coach. they helped me immensely and through the two years after i started playing competitive i got a lot better. by my third year, i could say i was one of the better players on the team.

in my third season, i once again had the coaches who gave patches. that season they gave patches again since we were still in a younger league. again, i was normally last to get a patch, but this time it confused me. i truly believed i was a good player on the team and i strived for recognition. many of my teammates got that recognition, even though i believed i deserved it as much as them.

in my fourth year, our coach didn't give out patches. instead, he gave away captaincy. there were three captains, not one of them being me, which honestly confused me. that year i definitely worked harder than anyone else and was one of the strongest girls on my team. i spoke up and took initiative even though i really didn't have to. i tried harder than most girls to impress my coaches and showed up early to every single practice earlier than needed. it confused me even more when i started playing full games. that season, i wasn't subbed out once until i injured my ankle and could barely walk, much less kick a soccer ball. i was really frustrated that my efforts were to no avail.

it turned out that i didn't get the captaincy that year because i couldn't play in the first session of our indoor season. i still showed up to more practices than people who actually played the session and hadn't missed a single one. i was still unhappy with this reasoning, but it was what it was.

i finally understand now why i didn't get the patches those years and why my hard work didn't overlook the fact i couldn't play the first session of indoor so i could be a captain of the team. i'm a defender, and strictly that. the only time i'm ever played up front is when we're winning by several points or when the game isn't important. i couldn't make explosive plays that people noticed because i was never anywhere near the goal. i wasn't a super star because i didn't stack up to the "good player" expectation because i wasn't scoring goals from my side of the field.

i realized this when i finally got the recognition i wanted. in the last game of my fourth year of competitive soccer, i scored a goal from half field. i have a rocket for a foot and if i took the shot more often, i could sink more goals. i'm a humble player and honestly thought the goal would never go in. when it did, i was in shock. i never believed it would.

the sad thing about it is that i could tell some of my team didn't think it would either. they didn't have faith in my shot because i didn't make shots all of the time.

when people think about good players, they think goal scorers or goal savers. they don't think what's in between. if you asked someone who the good players on my team are, no one would think me because i don't play a position people think of when they think good.

expectations are too heavily relied on. i'm a good player and i know that but no one cares if you don't exceed the set expectations.

this made no sense at all, i don't know. i just had a random thought and need to put it down. all i'm saying is that expectations shouldn't measure your level of achievement.