My Love Of A Soccer Ball-Personal Narrative

I love intensity. I love the limelight. I love pressure. But as my approach to the ball in the biggest game in my soccer career became shorter, my whole body was overcome by a surge of doubt. My muscles froze and I could feel the eyes of all two thousand bystanders glued onto my back. The effect this single kick of a ball, something I’ve done since the age of three, was one that would cause a terrible experience.
Nothing could compare to the experience that was on the horizon during that humid July afternoon. The heavy breathing and nerves were very apparent among my team as we limped off of the field. We had just finished one-hundred and twenty minutes of hard-fought soccer in the blistering heat of July. A penalty shootout was the task at …show more content…
It seemed as though there was some magical force that was deflating my confidence as I stepped closer to the penalty spot. The feeling in the air turned into a sudden feeling of uncertainty. It seemed as though my feet had become bricks and I could no longer walk. My own knees began to buckle under the slightest of pressure from the ground. My ankles continued to glitch mid-walk and never seemed to catch up to the pace of my nervously moving feet. The brisk feeling of the summer air continued to whisk into my face as I adjusted my floppy hair in order to see the path in front of me. I could feel every ounce of sweat that was dripping down my face onto the soft turf. My own blinking sped up and produced water that squeezed through the sides of my eyes. The sight of the goal and ball in front of me were now blurry, and the familiarization with the very object that I’ve grown up with, diminished in front of me. It seemed that in that moment, the ball had grown five times the size it originally was. It sat there, glaring at me, mocking me to test its limits. Accepting the challenge, I forced myself to use the tiny bit of strength I still contained to pick the ball up. It seemed that the ball had not just grown in size, but it had become much heavier as well. Spinning the ball in my hands, my muscles began to tense. There was a sense of relief as I set the ball on the penalty spot. Carefully, I moved the extra blades of grass with a swift movement of my …show more content…
There was a straight path in front of me to the ball, but it didn’t seem that way. The distance looked as if it were dragged out for miles and miles with no end. I began to proceed with my forward motion to hit the ball. My legs seemed to be dragging behind me like I was trudging through tar. The nerves in my calves went into shock and seemingly stopped operating. My steps inched closer to the ball until my plant foot reached the left side of the ball. In that moment, every sound turned to nothing, my kicking leg swung forward in slow motion, and feeling of my own heartbeat felt as though it was about to beat right out of my chest. The contact with the ball and my right foot was weak. My own knowledge of how to properly kick a soccer ball had skipped out of my mind. My foot skimmed over the top of the ball, causing it to slowly dribble to the right side of the goal. The goalkeeper at this point was leaning to the right but quickly shifted to his left to bury away the