by Jonathan C, Staff Writer
My time at Galileo was memorable. While I met a lot of new people, and participated in different clubs and activities, my most notable experience came from being on the 2022-2023 Galileo Soccer team because it was a 4 year journey.
During my Freshman year, I remember trying out for the soccer team like it was yesterday. At the time I was nervous because I didn’t think that I would have the guts to tryout. As the tryouts went on and people got cut, I was still on, I was surprised.
Eventually I did end up getting cut but I showed myself that it was possible to make the team and that all I have to do is put in the work and effort to achieve what I wanted, that was to be on the team.
When I was cut from the tryouts I didn’t take it as a rejection but rather an opportunity to improve on myself and my skills. During my time at the soccer tryouts I met a couple of other people who were also willing to put in the work to improve themselves, I just knew that this was going to be the start of my self improvement. It would be a since I time consuming since I had to go to the field which was around 30 minutes away from my house and find pick up games where if they needed a player I would join in. I ended up improving in a lot of things that I needed to work on. I improved my confidence on the field and how to deal with pressure when the ball is on my feet.
COVID-19 took a big impact on my training, it stopped a lot of things such as me going outside to train. It was a dark time because school was canceled which meant that all sports were stopped. During this time I had a small garden which wasn’t much but it helped me with my training. When we came back from lockdown all sports were still opening up, It was a kind of love and hate relationship with soccer. I was already a junior and my main focus was school and on the side was soccer. There were tryouts during my junior year I went to a couple of tryouts but was slowly falling out of love with the sport because I wanted to focus more on school.
At the beginning of my Senior year of high school, things got interesting when it came to soccer. As for soccer, I felt like trying out this year was going to be different compared to the other years, I was walking on the field with a different mindset, I had told myself that it’ll be different than freshman year and that all the off-season work would pay off. Tryouts were hard, but I joined the Galileo Soccer team. Joining the team was a roller coaster of emotions, I wasn’t sure what the expect. As soon as I stepped into the field I was greeted with a bunch of other players, we all got to know each other and it felt like a team. During my time on the soccer team, I met a lot of great friends and everyone would bond with one another off the field. Joining the soccer team was special to me because it showed me that in a team there are also friendships, not just the competitiveness.
