Day 79 of 100

“I thought you were done with sports.”

When I was very young, my mom took me to the doctor who told her that she should get me into sports.

“But not a sport like baseball where there is a lot of standing around.” He warned her.

So I started to play soccer, and got pretty good at it. I played AYSO, which is the American Youth Soccer Organization, and their motto was “Everyone Plays!”

My dad started as an assistant coach and grew into our head coach.

I loved it.

When we moved from Mountain View to San Jose I used to take the bus for over an hour to make soccer practice, and would get rides home from my dad.

When I got to high school I thought I was good enough to play soccer, so I stopped. I got recruited to play on the football team, but it turned out I was not very good. The joke was that some small colleges recruited me to play football for them, and it was clear that they never saw me play.

Many of the football players also wrestled, so at Independence High, I wrestled. I was midsized. Too small for the big guys and too big for the small guys. At one point during practice, I got thrown over someone’s shoulder and heard something rip in my shoulder.

Back to the doctor, who told me that I had torn something in my shoulder, and I should stop wrestling and playing football for fear I would lose the ability to lift my arm. My wrestling coach was pissed and I got a B- in wrestling. Some friends had joined the swim team, so I did the same and loved it. By the time I was a senior I was a co-captain, and a decent swimmer. I wasn’t the best, nor the worst, and did pretty well overall.

When I got to college, I knew I wasn’t good enough to swim at UC Davis, so I joined the lacrosse team, and that turned out to be my sport. I played until my senior year when I took 20 units a quarter and no longer had time, so became a coach.

I ended up playing and coaching for more than a decade post college, and I miss coaching quite a lot. Perhaps that is something to look into post this project.