outcome of evolved hardship

By Gustavo Ornelas

Football known as “soccer” here in the U.S is what introduced me to the feeling of beauty, hope, and happiness. Always feeling excited to play football for 2-3 hours a day no matter what predicaments I was going through. However, I did hate football for a while because of my injuries and lack of skill, and yet, I continued to play to the point where I found it as my hobby for 6-7 years on a daily basis, and was like a remedy to my pain, sadness, and stress.

Going through my childhood, it wasn’t fascinating, especially when I was around 9-10 years old. I would have some sort of weird life, I did things with my friends that weren’t benefiting me neither pleasing me at all such as playing weird games that were considered challenging at the time, such as who can drink the most, eat the most, and act like if we had some sort of disease. But this all changed when my dad introduced football to me. Initially, I didn’t enjoy football, I was horrible, I would play for like one hour a day and would not progress when it came to skills.

As I played football throughout a partial part of my life though, I still remember how my dad would say “Pata chueca,” which in my own perspective I found this hilarious until I realized he wasn’t joking. And that made me emotional, but it inspired my mentality to push myself harder. Just like Sun Tzu said, “let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” So I quickly started practicing for a decent amount of hours on a daily basis for years, and after all of the practice I did, now I could say with confidence I was a good football player with nice dribbling and shooting.

Unfortunately during middle school, I started to get injured quicker due to ignoring the aftermath of doing barely any exercise and lifting weights, I simply didn’t take into consideration the effects of it. While I still could play perfectly fine though, my cardio gradually got worse over time. Moreover, I started to even struggle breathing, and I knew this would have a negative impact on me.

Furthermore, my dignity and honor slowly shattered because even after all the things I did for my teammates and coach, my coach decided to use me as a “statue,” using me as a substitute now, which in this case, I was like a ghost on the team, I would never play in the pitch, and if so, it would be for 2-3 minutes. I would cry, and talk to god saying, “Why is this happening to me, what did I do to deserve this!? But eventually I realized that this payback was because of my own actions that I continued to persevere even knowing they were bad which I also predicted that the aftermath of lack of exercise would haunt me.

Nevertheless, I decided to make a major change in my life. When high school started, I made a promise to myself that I would be as fit as William Levy, and would not care what it would take to get to that stage of my life because I didn’t want to stop playing football due to the love I had for it. More importantly, I attended a gym in a matter of days and started on gear one.

After a continuous journey, I started to improvise my body, I would see changes in my muscles, which indicated that I got stronger and that meant that I wouldn’t get injured as quickly. Finally, after months of hard work, I got to the point that injuries weren’t even a threat to me.

That being said, my coach eventually put me as the main forward again, and I would carry my team with of course some teamwork making me always score goals against other teams. Sometimes doing solo goals, dribbling past the players. Additionally, I made my team go to the finals, and semifinals at tournaments a decent amount of times by scoring a goal at the last minute. I just loved football so much that when I became 16, I decided to never give up playing the match despite getting tackled multiple times to the point my legs were slowly losing their strength. However, even when I had a minor injury, I would join in to play because football was everything to me, I enjoyed every single moment of it..

Football is the reason why I learned to never give up, and fight with my heart like a warrior who has reached his full peak. Sadly, I eventually left my football team because I had to focus on my education, but I left with pride knowing that football taught me happiness, and motivation. That being said, I also left my team my legacy being known as the top forward player in the team for them, inspiring them to realize the beauty of football and what it can create.