International Soccer USA | England

I’m finally back to the travel series posts! You may have remembered that I skipped over a trip last time and preceded on to my time in Spain, but now I am going back to the summer before high school and my time spent abroad playing soccer. This will be a two post-er as the trip spanned two countries, so come back next week to hear the rest of this journey 🙂

I’m sure I’ve mentioned at some point in this space of my deep love for all things sport, especially soccer. When I was four, I started playing and played organized soccer until I was twenty-two. Needless to say, it was a HUGE part of my life growing up and I spent almost every day, year round, kicking around a ball. I played for both club and school leagues and pretty much wanted to be Mia Hamm in my younger days. Now I played other sports as well min you; softball, basketball, and even ran track; but nothing compared to my affinity for soccer. And because I loved it so much, I wanted to be perfect at it. Practice after practice, camp after camp, I spent devoted to the game. I played defense (sweeper mainly) or outside mid when I was on the field, or I played in goal. Yeah, you read that right, 5’4″ little ol’ me defended the goal like a champ. I used to be quite springy in those days! Anyhow, I was versatile and would play where ever I was needed just to stay on the field. And evidently, I was pretty ok at it, b/c I kept staying out on the field.

When I was 14, I was given the opportunity to play with an team representing the USA in Europe in two different tournaments. The agency had a team for each age group for both guys and girls and I was on the U-14 team as well as played with the U-19 team. We shipped off to England and spent the first week of our journey training at Millfield School in Somerset. We lived in dorms and trained all day during that time in order to get to know our team. As we were gathered from all across the country, we spent the time getting to know one another both on and off the field and  grew to become family spending every waking moment together.

When we got back from our time in Sweden, we got straight back to training.  This time we were in Manchester so our time was spent mostly at Manchester United. Which was a dream come true!

We trained in their indoor facilities and on breaks took tours of everything you could imagine, including Old Trafford, the museum, and the locker rooms. My goodness it was incredible. It was like a mecca for the truly soccer devout. We played in the Manchester Umbro Cup festival and we won the gold medal for our division! Talk about icing on the cake.  Our coach, who was British and played there, was more than proud to say the least.

During this time I not only experienced incredible sights, and wonderful opportunity, I learned the value of discipline. Of training your body and mind to be so focused on one activity and pouring your life into it. We worked until we perfected our passes, our shots, and then did it again. We shined our “boots” each night, tucked our shirts, and repeated our chants during runs each morning. We breathed soccer, flooding our minds and bodies with the game.

I learned the value of differences in expressions, and how important it is to know your audience. I remember our coach saying he was going to “knock us up” in the morning. A very different phrase for the British meaning literally to come and knock on our doors to wake us up in the morning! Countless other phrases needed explanation, on both parts, to ensure understanding. Idiomatic expressions clarified to maintain conversation. It was the same with certain customs. We learned to adapt to the way of life in the United Kingdom rather than force our American ways in a place where we were guests.

It was on this journey, interacting with teams from all over the world, that I realized just how similar we all really were. We were all there for one purpose. To play the game we loved. To gather around this ball that united us, a multitude of differences among us, to seek the same thing. Regardless of what we called it, what language we used, or what we looked like, we all played the same game. I had no idea how much this realization would later come to flood my life and how I viewed the world, and it’s people, as being united on a much deeper level.

I came away from this trip, my first experience abroad “alone” so to speak, with a very real understanding of what it meant to truly embrace the moment and the situation at hand. As a wide eyed teenager, I returned home ready to conquer high school with this desire to learn about the world, the customs and cultures that comprised it, the people who made those areas unique, and the things that universally connected us all.