My First College Soccer Game

 I do not own this picture this is from (tlubulldogs.com). It's from the TLU Athletics Gallery.


September 3rd, 2011, was my first college soccer game for Texas Lutheran University. Being a freshman, I was pretty nervous at the start of the game because first of all it was my first college game and I didn't know what to expect being that there was a big difference from playing at a high school level than playing at college level. And second of all, I was starting so it was extremely nerve racking but as soon as the game started all those nerves and butterflies went away. Throughout the game I noticed some differences between playing in high school to playing in college was that it was a lot more physical and the pace of play was faster. The pace of play was faster so I had to adjust to the pace throughout the game but I got the hang of it pretty fast. As for the physical aspect, I straight up was getting my butt kicked because I wasn't playing as aggressive and physical as my opponents. But I completely changed that and became more aggressive by the second half especially since we were losing at the end of the first half 1-0. During halftime I was upset because we were losing and all I wanted to do was help my team by trying my hardest to help our team win the game in some way. One of the girls on the team said something in the huddle that made me want to play better for the team and also motivated me to not only play for myself but play for my teammates as well, she said "Come on girls, let's play for each other!". After she said that I got this sense of motivation and determination to play even harder and with more heart the second half because I realized that this team was my new team now and I wasn't playing for my small town high school anymore I was no longer a queen (my high school mascot) I was a bulldog now and I was playing for something bigger now I was playing for my university, Texas Lutheran University. Two minutes after the second half started I ended up taking a shot from outside and ended up scoring and man it was a great feeling seeing my teammates happily run towards me and give me high fives. It was my first collegiate goal and I'll never forget it. Anyways the score was tied 1-1, ten minutes after my goal my freshman friend headed the ball and assisted my other freshman friend's goal which I found pretty cool because my freshman friends and I were all really nervous before the game because we didn't want to bad and we did okay after all. Well we were winning 2-1 but our adversary ended up beating us and scoring two more goals on us so we ended up losing a close game 2-3. It sucked that we lost because I felt like we should've won and I played my hardest out there and so did the rest of my team but I learned a lot for it only being my first college game. And as much as I didn't want to lose our first game we did but in order to learn how to win you got to learn how to lose and now we just got to focus on our next game and learn from this loss.