Friday, March 16, 2012

Queue the World Cup!


Now that we have gotten used to our classes a lot of us have started to work out regularly at the gym and do the workout program called Insanity.  It also has finally started to warm up and the sun broke through the clouds for a few days.  When it did, we took full advantage of it.  

One of our classmates from the Environmental Engineering major invited us to play soccer against some of the teachers Wednesday afternoon.  I have been waiting for the nice weather to go outside and play soccer, I could play basketball with other students but I am not very good.  There were 5 of us and together we teamed with our classmate from SMU and some of his friends.  

There were three teams; us, the teachers (one of them is our professors for class), and another group of students from SMU.  Since there was an odd number the first team that scored a goal would stay on the field and play the team that was sitting on the sidelines.  It was our team against the teachers at first, we played and battled for the ball for 10 minutes or so.  I mainly played the sweeper position, which is the last line of defense, because it was the position I had played in high school and felt most comfortable with.  I am by no means an all-star but I held my own for not having played in 5 months and not having any cleats.  Anyway, after playing for another five minutes our team finally managed to score.  

The next team was also very good, they were slightly better skilled than the teachers and obviously younger. We had to pick up our game if we wanted to win.  When we played against these guys from SMU it felt like we had played another 20 minutes before we were able to score again.  Once, the teachers took the field again they could tell we were tired and pressed harder.  They got some lucky bounces too and were finally able to score on us.  However, the other team of SMU students were one and done and had started taking off their cleats.  At the end of the day we played from 1400 to 1700.  It was a great time.

There are also other international students and the guys we met from the Ivory Coast had told us that they play soccer too.  They invited us to play with them on Friday afternoon once everyone was done with classes.  I didn't really want to play because I was still very sore from Wednesday and then lifting weights Thursday afternoon.  However after taking a nap I felt refreshed enough to play, plus I figured once I start running around I will feel better and not as sore.  

This time we teamed up with the guys from the Ivory Coast.  I was the only one that played Wednesday, the others were off doing other things or getting ready to head into the downtown area for the weekend.  Our opponent were also kids from SMU, but they were from Northern China almost near Russia.  The teams were pretty well balanced, although the SMU guys had better foot skills than us but we were able to shoulder them off the ball at times.  Again, we were the only guys without cleats and we kept on slipping on the turf.  We played a full game and after two hours of playing it ended in a draw 2-2.  It was great to get outside and meet new people playing soccer.  We can't wait to play again sometime next week.

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