Don't Forget to Write

I Lose My Head

It was Friday, the day of our match against NYU. Bruno's warnings of the skill difference between our school and a D1 school rattled around my brain and it took every effort to push them out and keep my hands from shaking. Nerves are good, but too much nervousness, especially for a goalkeeper, will lose a match. Before going to the school to get on the bus, I went into Abe's for coffee and a sandwich. It was the middle of his lunch rush, and there must have been twenty people crowded in the deli. I kept looking over my shoulder for suspicious figures, making awkward eye contact with people. When it was my turn to pay, Abe waved me on, not accepting my cash. "I still owe you for the other day," he said.

"That wasn't your fault."

"You had a gun pointed at you in my store," he whispered just loud enough for only me to hear, "I feel like that is my fault."

I shook my head, but thanked him, and put ten dollars in the tip jar.

In the locker room Armando gave us our pregame lineup, tactics, and directions. We hopped on the vans and rode to the NYU field, which was actually in the Bronx. Schools in Manhattan don't have the space for sporting facilities, so they tend to rent out fields elsewhere. The field we were playing on actually belonged to Manhattan College... which wasn't despite the name, wasn't even in Manhattan. The campus was in the Bronx. Never trust the name or title of a college. As a matter of fact, never trust a college. Always watch your back around these academic black holes of bureaucracy, power, and wealth.

By the time we got to the field it was drizzling and night was about to fall. My nerves turned all of the game-day warm-ups and stretches into a blur of motion and repetition. All too quickly, I was in the middle of the field lined up with the starters from each team and the referees as a singer in the stands held out that last note on "brave" from the Star-Spangled Banner. I thought it was weird that they forced us to have this display of nationalism before every game, but it did help me get my mind straight in a behavioral-conditioning kind of way. Once that last note ended, my mind, and hopefully the minds of my teammates, clicked into game mode. No chance to turn back, warm-up, stretch more, or talk about tactics. Once that song ended, the 45-minute half began. Finally, after what felt like enough time to play a whole game, the singer ended the word "brave," everybody applauded, we shook hands with the other team, and I took up my stance between the posts of the goal.

Usually in a soccer game, the two teams spend the first fifteen minutes testing each other; figuring out which players were the slowest, which were the strongest, who had the best ball control, etc. It was like a puzzle with 11 moving pieces on each side, you had to find out the right algorithm to expose the opposition. In this game, it only took about a minute and half for NYU to figure us out. The equation was simple; they were better than us in every way. Faster. Stronger. More skilled. It took me only about two minutes to realize the same thing. Two minutes and thirty seconds into the game NYU had already passed the ball with ease around our defenders, making them look as stagnant as traffic cones, and took a blast of a shot from about ten yards out that I dove out for at full extension and pushed away with two fingertips. Seconds later they were preparing for their corner kick, and I was yelling out the commands of which of my defenders should cover which of their players. Typically, a keeper would want to match their defenders with attackers who are closest to their respective heights. Any aerial advantage was crucial on corner kicks. After the first two commands, I realized many more would have been virtually useless. All of the players on NYU were at least 6 foot, some of them a full head taller than my own players. But it was too late to think about that, I had just heard the quick steps of a person running up to take the corner kick. My senses were heightened, and time slowed down. All at once, the faces of the players flashed in front of me, the shuffling of feet around the box told me where they were going, and the curve and height of the ball showed perfect path for an absolute giant of a man in the middle of the box. Even our tallest player had no chance of challenging him in the air for the header. I sprinted out, leaped, put a knee up, and braced for impact as I punched out hoping to make contact with the ball before his head could reach it. I felt my knuckles make good contact with the wet ball before my body clashed into the giant. He went down and I fell on top of him, quickly scrambling up and returning to my goal as another NYU player recovered the ball that was bouncing outside of the penalty box. He took a hard shot, it came right for my torso and I smothered it. The giant was only now lifting himself up, like a skyscraper reconstructing itself. He gave me a dirty look, then turned and jogged up the field.