This story is in honor of the World Cup! I've learned to love soccer, but in high school I played football. American football. There was a stigma perpetrated by the older players and coaches that the male soccer players were basically just too wimpy to play football. Our practices were always confined to the football field, but the soccer players would often have to run long loops around all the fields in the sports complex. Whenever they ran by our field, all the football coaches and players would snicker and laugh off their superior display of endurance; "hahaha soccerbunnies."
As a lineman, I ran the least on the team. We constantly ran 5 yard sprints to get quicker off the snap but never anything long distance. One time in the off season, one of my coaches saw me running a mile near my house. He pulled over his car, and he yelled at me for wasting my time when I should have been in the gym bulking up.
Needless to say on a particularly hot day of football practice, I was ill prepared to go toe to toe with the "soccer bunnies". They overheard our snide comments and told their coach. The soccer coach came onto our field and challenged our coaches to a soccer scrimmage. For the next 45 minutes, the entire tough and manly football team were decimated by the "soccer bunnies". I think the score was something like 12-0. They ran circles around us. Maybe it was partly because our head coach made us play the scrimmage in full pads and helmets. Thanks, Coach Dick!
No comments:
Post a Comment