The Village People

GOOOOOOOAL!!!

The ref whistled the start of the game and after only four seconds had expired, we were up 1-nil.

What an exciting start to the season, and what a way for our outsider recruit Michael Richardson to prove his worth and solidify his spot on the team. The beautiful shot from 20 yards out gave me the feeling that this would be a great game to start off the season of my intramural coed soccer team. It was indeed great in many ways: great fun, great friendships with teammates, great workout, great times, but by no means did it end in a great victory.

In fact, I walked home Thursday evening in the bitter cold after possible the greatest defeat of my life. We notched up a second goal when Carlos converted on an early PK, but the 2 on our side of the scoreboard was put to shame by the 14 posted by the opposing squad.

I didn't even know it was possible to score 14 points in a soccer game. We only play for 40 minutes!

Leading up to the season, I was way stoked to put together a team. I don't consider myself a great soccer player, but I think playing soccer is great. So I started recruiting people in my University Villa ward who felt the same way. And thus, The Village People united and formed an awesome team of futbol-ers. Most of us have played on teams at some point in our lives - a few may have played high school varsity, while a few others may have been the stars of their 4th grade community team (but haven't played since). Our goalie actually isn't a soccer player at all - but he played goalie for his high school water polo team, which I felt was close enough. Maybe that explains the 14 goals...

I wasn't sure what to think after that game. Are we really that bad? Or did we just get unlucky and face a really tough team in our opening game of the season? Maybe we just need a couple games to mesh as a team. After all, most of us hadn't touched a soccer ball for months (or years) until the ref blew that whistle to start the game. We were tracking down shin guards the day of the game (a few guys made an emergency trip to Wal-mart so they'd be eligible to play that night), and a couple people on the team didn't even have cleats. Our goalie was using his snowboarding gloves and wearing my tennis shoes (because he figured they'd at least be a little better than his Vans). It's a good thing my little brother gave me a soccer ball for Christmas, or we wouldn't have even been able to contribute a game ball.

So after our humbling pummeling, I began to realize how unprepared our little make-shift soccer team was. I was forced to admit that we may just not be championship-winning material. Yet.

But now there's nowhere to go but up after our season opener. And we're going up fast. We know what the competition's like now, and we know what we have to do. All you Disney lovers just think "The Big Green" and you'll know how the rest of our season will play out. We're going to be locked and loaded and we'll hit the turf running next Friday for game two. Look out Team 71, because The Village People are ready to show what they're made of!