My worst sports memories (part 2)
Being and athlete was strongly encouraged by my parents from a very young age and it is something that me and all of my siblings are very happy happened. It seems that as far back as all of us can remember we were playing sports of some sort - of all sorts actually, and two of the 4 kids in my family went on to get college scholarships for athletics. One of us ended up playing professionally (it wasn't me - I played soccer, which was dreadfully unpopular in USA at the time I was in college and MLS didn't yet exist.)
I, and the rest of my siblings had many many great sporting victories but we also had our fair share of letdowns and a few of mine stick in my mind to this day. Most of my sport memories pertain to soccer and that is the source of this very bad memory that even though it happened more than 25 years ago, sticks with me to this day.
A Horrible and Unexpected Defeat
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Just a heads up, none of these photos are going to be of the actual event or even of my team, we didn't have digital cameras back then and I wouldn't want any nostalgic evidence of this day anyway
Our soccer team was in its budding stages back in 1992. Like I said, soccer was not a popular sport in USA back in those days and many of the high schools didn't even have programs yet. Ours had just begun and there wasn't even a girls team at all. I don't know for sure but I want to say that our team had only been in existence for a year or two at this point. We also had one girl on our team... she was from Europe and was much better than most of the boys in our division - which says a lot about the popularity of "football" in other countries than in USA back then.
Despite the fact that myself and one other member of our high school team were pretty dominant players and both of us would end up getting named to the "all region" team and I would later get named to "All State" team, we were just slightly above average as far as the standings were concerned. This is solely because, as I am sure you know, soccer is a team sport and you can not win games with just one or two good players when the rest of your team is ass... and that was the case with us.
We would routinely win as many as we lost and there was one team that we had already played once earlier in the year and beaten then 3-1 on our home grounds. Side note: The "league" was so new that most high schools, including our own, didn't even have a soccer field, we played in the local park and the conditions of the pitch would often be very very bad. There were also no bleachers for spectators because no one, including most of the parents, even bothered to come to our games.
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We traveled to Harrisonburg, which was about an hour's drive away from our city to face them on their own grounds and they too did not have an official field but I will admit (and I remember this) that their pitch was in MUCH better condition than our own was.
One thing that contributes to my poor memory of this date was that for reasons I do not know, we were put on a "short bus" because I guess it was the only one available that day and our team was only about 17 people and one coach anyway.
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"The short bus" is normally how kids with "special needs" are carted to and from school and it certainly doesn't do much for your feeling of being a strong soccer team when you turn up in this. We were laughed at because of this upon our arrival.
Ok, so like I said we had already handily defeated Harrisonburg earlier in the year so I don't know if we didn't take them seriously the 2nd time, if their superior pitch was a massive factor, or if we were just terribly off our game but this match was an embarrassment for the record books.
It really didn't seem to matter what we did but we could get nothing done on the field. We spent almost the entire game on our own end and even though our coach (who didn't know what the hell he was doing) adjusted to make it a more defensive game putting us in a 2-5-3 setup, the Harrisonburg team just marched past us like we weren't even there every time they had posession.
The scored goal after goal and we had no response. I still remember the name of our goalkeeper and while NONE of us blamed him for this, we ended up losing the game 13-1. You read that right thirteen goals to one!
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This is what their team looked like basically the entire 90 grueling minutes
The only goal we scored was scored by the other guy on the team and I fed him the ball from a long way back. It was just sheer luck that their defense was well out of position that this one goal was possible (and why shouldn't they be since we were playing the entire game on our end.)
Newspapers normally didn't even report the scores of these games other than a small byline at the bottom of the sports page but this victory on the part of the Harrisonburg team was featured prominently on the Front Page of their local newspaper. Our paper made a big deal out of it too, the jerks.
The crazy thing is that Harrisonburg was NOT a good team, we ended up finishing well ahead of them in the rankings that year and at least on paper, we were a much better team. I don't know what we did wrong or what they did correctly that ill-fated day, but it was a day that remains in my mind all these years later. It was the most crushing defeat that I had ever faced in any sport that I would ever play in my life.
You always remember the best moments and the worst ones right? Well this is one of my worst :(
Got any sporting memories to share? I'd love to hear about it if you do!