This past week, my roommate and I were asked to dust off our soccer skills from our past years of JV soccer to play in a Saturday night futsal tournament. Afraid of missing out on our opportunity to win the prize of a trip to Chipotle, we readily accepted.
When the night came, I was prepared, wearing running shoes, ready to become drenched in sweat, and likely taking it far too seriously. At any rate, the games began, and while our team could barely keep it together, laughing most of the time, we found ourselves on the winning end of a few games and made our way to the semi-finals. The number of teams slimmed, more people gathered around, and after an injury and a few roster changes (dutifully assessed by the student refs), we somehow found ourselves walking into the finals. At this point, we had to see it through, hearts pounding and nearly an hour and a half deep into the event we couldn’t end on a loss. While that last game seemed to last a lifetime, it came to an end with a shot from half “field” that made its way through the mess of defenders to give our team the win. Happy that it was over as I would need to change out of my sweat-drenched clothes, we posed for our victorious photo. While the event seems trivial, it was the act of getting everyone together to do something aimless and competitive (along with the Chipotle) that made this one of my favorite Saturdays at Groton.