Quinton Lyvers
Ben Taylor
ENG 101z, 9:30
September 16, 2015
Learning the Game of Soccer
Something that I have become literate in over the years is the game of soccer. I became literate in soccer by starting out at a young age and then continuing with it as I got older. When I was about five or six years old, my mom asked me if I wanted to play soccer and I said yes. She signed me up for the recreational league and my love and knowledge of the game escalated from there. I played in the recreational league for a few more years, tried out for a competitive club team, played high school soccer, and then became a referee for the sport! As I got older I became more literate in how the game was supposed to be played, but as I was beginning I was at a low-skill level.
I started my soccer career on a team with kids the same age as me, and none of us really knew how to play. The coach was a dad of one of the kids on the team and he was a volunteer coach, so he didn’t really know much either, except for the basics. At practice, the coach would teach us simple rules of the game such as not being able to use your hands and kicking the ball to your teammates for support. He also taught us one of the biggest and simplest rules of soccer: have fun- and having fun is what made me want to learn more about soccer. When it was time to play a game, my teammates and I all followed the ball in a pack and it was hilarious because it was like soccer wasn’t even being played; a group of little kids chasing a ball around, kicking and tripping other little kids in the process isn’t soccer, but we were learning from it.
Every year my mom would sign me back up and I would play on a different team. Each year the practices and games became a little more difficult because opponents were getting bigger and better. I had to learn how to play against these new opponents by using speed, good defense, and teamwork and, ultimately, it made me a better player. Although I was still learning the mechanics of the game like passing, dribbling, and shooting, I found that I was doing better in games and practices than I was before. After noticing that I was improving in the basic skills needed for soccer, I wanted to see what I could actually do with those basic skills and maybe turn them into higher level skills. I wanted to continue playing soccer, but I wanted something challenging (because after all you don’t get better at something unless you are challenged in that something) so I tried out for a competitive club team.
I remember being so scared for my first competitive soccer tryout; I thought that I wouldn’t be near as good as the other players trying out. I went to the tryout and did okay in the tasks I was asked to take part in: dribbling with some skill moves, shooting accurately, and passing accurately. All of the kids trying out for the team were third graders, nine-year-old boys; we weren’t going to be perfect in the tasks the coach asked us to do. However, if the coach saw at least some potential in us, he would keep us. The whole time I was at the tryout I was so nervous that the coach wouldn’t want to keep me. I was so excited when I found out that I had made the competitive soccer team as I saw that as a chance for me to further improve my skills. I think I made it because I worked hard enough that the coach saw some potential in me. It was just something that I really wanted and it brought out the competitiveness in me. The fear that I had about not making the team pushed me to work harder while I was at the tryout and was a motivator for me to learn more about the game.
Practice for a competitive team was a lot different than a practice for a rec team. The coach wanted us to be conditioned, disciplined, and skilled, unlike in rec soccer where we were just there to have fun. The goal of club soccer was to develop mediocre players into great players. We ran for most of the practice and did drills where we worked on the mechanics of the game like passing and dribbling; we learned by repetition of the drills and exercises. It was at competitive practices where I started to learn soccer “terms.” For example, I learned what being offside meant, I learned how to properly kick a soccer ball, I learned how to actually play the game of soccer instead of just kicking the ball up the field every time it came near me. One of the main things I learned was how to give commands to people when they received a pass from me; phrases like “man-on” (meaning there is a defender behind you), “turn” (meaning that there is no one behind you so you can turn with the ball), and “time” (meaning that you have plenty of time before a defender reaches you so take that time to make a good decision with the ball). I learned how to use these commands from the drills we did repetitively at practice. I tried to make use of what I learned at practice during the games that I played so I could actually show what I had learned. I found out what was expected of me on the competitive team by listening to the coach and watching other players who had better skills than me.
My first season on the competitive team was not a good one. I sat on the bench for every single game, maybe getting to play five to ten minutes in the whole game. This was a confidence crusher for me. I thought that I was finally good enough to play on a club soccer team, but all I was doing was sitting on the bench. I talked to my coach after a practice one day and asked him what I could do to get more playing time during games and he told me to work on my ball touches and passing at home and not just whenever we had a scheduled practice. I then started to practice more on my own to get better, kicking a ball against the house to work on my touches and passes. I wasn’t really teaching myself how to do things, I was just taking what I had learned at practice and doing it at home to improve on my own. Sometimes I would get my little brother to practice with me because having an extra person there made it more fun and when you are having fun you want to learn more since you’re interested. The following season I got quite a bit more playing time as it increased from five to ten minutes a game to maybe thirty to forty minutes a game. The next season after that and most every season to follow I was a starter for the team because I had put in the extra work at home to learn the proper techniques used in the game. My confidence really boosted and I felt like I was a great impact to my team.
Soon after competitive soccer, I was introduced to high school soccer which was equally challenging, if not more challenging, than competitive soccer. The main focus for the high school team was to win games and make it to the state tournament. What was cool about playing on the high school team was that my coach was the same coach I had for competitive soccer. We became closer and he became a huge role model for me having taught me everything I knew about the game of soccer. He was able to really see how much my soccer skills had improved since I played for him on the club team. It was in high school soccer that I learned to develop some leadership skills, especially when I became a senior. All of the underclassmen really looked up to me and I enjoyed be able to teach them what I knew about the game of soccer and how they could get better at it. Any time one of my teammates got upset with themselves for messing up, I encouraged them and told them what they could do to fix it. I learned to reach the goals of the high school team by working as hard as I could at practice and keeping a strong mentality. I wanted to have a positive outlook on practices and games so I could learn from mistakes instead of letting them put me down. I learned many defensive and offensive formations and also more technical terms of the game. After learning some of the terms I decided to take on a new challenge: refereeing.
I wanted to learn how to become a referee so I could interact with the game of soccer still (because after high school soccer was over I was done playing) AND get paid for doing it. The referee course I had to take was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. It lasted a whole weekend, two eight hour days, Saturday and Sunday. In the course, the instructor taught us literally everything we needed to know about the game of soccer like the equipment needed to play, the technicalities of fouls, and the overall rules of the sport. Some of the content that was taught I had a pretty good knowledge of and other content was new to me because of how technical it was. At the end of the course there was a comprehensive test that you had to get an eighty percent or above on to get your referee license. I took the test to show what I had learned, which was a great deal of information. I feel like I know the game of soccer like the back of my hand and I feel confident enough about my knowledge of the game to be a referee for it.
Even though I don’t play much soccer anymore, I still feel as if I could play with close to the same skill as I had in high school because of the knowledge I still have of the sport. By continuing soccer over many years I became literate in it. Through recreational soccer, competitive soccer, high school soccer, and becoming a referee, I learned different aspects of the game. As I got older I became more knowledgeable about soccer and became a more skilled player. I took what I learned and used it every year as I advanced to a higher level.
Quinton Lyvers 