One year in when I was growing up, I went into my soccer season kind of sad, my past coach, wasn't going to be our team coach that year. It felt like a vase being shattered because I have had this coach for many years. Even my other team mates where sad but happy for him because he was moving to a higher level league to coach his daughters league. This season wasn't just any season though. We had a new coach, and we were also playing competitive soccer. What was competitive soccer? Well it's a lot different than our normal soccer. Instead of playing the local teams, we got to play in huge tournaments and against teams far away from Lorne Park. I remember the first game, against Glenwood's team. It was totally different than anything I have seen, we were getting to play at a college, and against a soon-to-be known rough team. We had started the game, and man these guys were violent. Dirty trips when the refs were not looking and a lot of shoving in tight corners. We started to retaliate big time, and my friend's dad was the center referee, John was his name. I sure would have hated to be in his shoe, that's for sure. It didn't even phase me how crazy soccer was this year until one of the Glenwood players spit at our coach's feet, and was tossed from the game.
We soon learned to live with this violence, and we even participated in it more than anyone would probably admit to. We had diving practices where we learned how to fall convincingly. But after all of the beat downs we had received from the other teams, we were finally going to go to a big tournament.
The next day we had a game against Glenwood, the team I think we hated more than any other team. Oh boy were we ready or what, we had taken tons of shots on the goalie, and been running around crazy, I thought I was at my peak. Then we get to the sideline, and I found out that I don't get to start, man was I angry, but I contained it. Eventually I got in, within 2 minutes of when I entered, there was a...