Did that really just happen?
“Come join us at soccer tryouts next Friday at the main field after school!” read the big, white flyer which I had picked up previously in the week after hearing about this eye-opening news during morning announcements. I was sitting on the bench outside reading the details as I waited in line for the person whose reaction I was most anxiously waiting to see. As a 5th grader, my first instinct was to alert my mom right away, which is exactly what I did as soon as I got in the passenger seat of the all black sedan.
The only issue was my mother’s reluctance to allow me to participate in a sport. As a child she had not been a huge sports fan and was always very cautious about potential injuries. As I told her all the …show more content…
Go to school and practice soccer after. Obviously, mama wasn't happy with me spending so much time out there but my dad had officially convinced her. The goalie, baba, was always there to help me improve at anything in life and in that instance it was the game of soccer, or “football” as referred to in Pakistan. He'd be diving and scraping his elbows in the rough, summer grass just to help me better myself.
It was the day I had been anticipating, August 31st, or the day of tryouts. “Good morning!” exclaimed Mrs. Grant, my teacher at the time. “I'm good how are you?” I replied. The pressure wouldn't even allow me to speak correctly. During class, the daydreaming had taken over my brain as a stared at the clock waiting for the 3:35 bell to ring. Before I knew it, the time was here and I strolled out of the classroom and made my way to the bathroom to get changed into the correct …show more content…
As I got on the bus and started squeezing myself in between the aisles to get to my usual spot, all that was going in my ears was the chatter of soccer tryouts since that was the day the coaches planned on posting the list of the people who had officially been inducted into the soccer program. I got off the bus and the first thing I saw was a clustered group of students huddled around a certain bulletin wall, I gulped. I took a deep breath and started making my way to the crowd. As I skimmed through the 20 names under the title “Under-11 Soccer team”, the name “Adil Naqvi” was not visible. After going over it over and over again, I gave up. My heart sunk and I started walking away slowly. There were other teams such as “Under-12 Soccer team” and so on. I checked those lists just to see who made what team and I catch something with the corner of my eye. I could not believe my eyes. “Adil Naqvi, 11” it read. I looked at the top of the sheet and read the bold words “Under-13 Soccer team”. My heart starts beating faster than ever, butterflies are flying around in my stomach. I thought to myself ,“Did I really just do that?”. As a 10-year-old, I hadn’t even bothered skimming through any team besides the Under-11 team scrambling for my name. I was officially the youngest kid on the Under-13 team. I couldn’t understand how to react to such great news so I skipped to class with a huge grin on my face. The
“Come join us at soccer tryouts next Friday at the main field after school!” read the big, white flyer which I had picked up previously in the week after hearing about this eye-opening news during morning announcements. I was sitting on the bench outside reading the details as I waited in line for the person whose reaction I was most anxiously waiting to see. As a 5th grader, my first instinct was to alert my mom right away, which is exactly what I did as soon as I got in the passenger seat of the all black sedan.
The only issue was my mother’s reluctance to allow me to participate in a sport. As a child she had not been a huge sports fan and was always very cautious about potential injuries. As I told her all the …show more content…
Go to school and practice soccer after. Obviously, mama wasn't happy with me spending so much time out there but my dad had officially convinced her. The goalie, baba, was always there to help me improve at anything in life and in that instance it was the game of soccer, or “football” as referred to in Pakistan. He'd be diving and scraping his elbows in the rough, summer grass just to help me better myself.
It was the day I had been anticipating, August 31st, or the day of tryouts. “Good morning!” exclaimed Mrs. Grant, my teacher at the time. “I'm good how are you?” I replied. The pressure wouldn't even allow me to speak correctly. During class, the daydreaming had taken over my brain as a stared at the clock waiting for the 3:35 bell to ring. Before I knew it, the time was here and I strolled out of the classroom and made my way to the bathroom to get changed into the correct …show more content…
As I got on the bus and started squeezing myself in between the aisles to get to my usual spot, all that was going in my ears was the chatter of soccer tryouts since that was the day the coaches planned on posting the list of the people who had officially been inducted into the soccer program. I got off the bus and the first thing I saw was a clustered group of students huddled around a certain bulletin wall, I gulped. I took a deep breath and started making my way to the crowd. As I skimmed through the 20 names under the title “Under-11 Soccer team”, the name “Adil Naqvi” was not visible. After going over it over and over again, I gave up. My heart sunk and I started walking away slowly. There were other teams such as “Under-12 Soccer team” and so on. I checked those lists just to see who made what team and I catch something with the corner of my eye. I could not believe my eyes. “Adil Naqvi, 11” it read. I looked at the top of the sheet and read the bold words “Under-13 Soccer team”. My heart starts beating faster than ever, butterflies are flying around in my stomach. I thought to myself ,“Did I really just do that?”. As a 10-year-old, I hadn’t even bothered skimming through any team besides the Under-11 team scrambling for my name. I was officially the youngest kid on the Under-13 team. I couldn’t understand how to react to such great news so I skipped to class with a huge grin on my face. The