This is yet another story from a later time in my life. This story took place just before corona hit the US. Soccer has always been a large player in my life and it’s probably the only thing that has kept me from obesity and becoming a complete shut-in nerd. Where I come from there are many different soccer leagues and plenty of skilled players to fill teams. Post college I actually didn’t play soccer for some time but once I moved back to San Francisco and split time between there and my hometown, I began playing again. At the point of this story, when I was just over 30, I was playing for a competitive team in San Francisco called The Olympic Club, several arena indoor soccer teams, and two different Mexican league teams. The Mexican leagues were pretty intense. They were kind of “underground” as the coaches were likely to pay for the top players to play on their teams and the team owners would gamble some big bucks on each game. All through my childhood I always had good relationships with the local Mexican soccer community so I was fortunate enough to be invited to play on what had been the reigning championship team for something like 10 seasons in a row. Being one of two white guys in the entire league was kind of thrilling but also put a small target on my back from the few that disapproved of diversifying the league.
Anyhow, soccer was once again becoming a pretty large part of my life and something I looked forward to on a weekly basis. Throughout my community soccer has always been a big deal, bigger than football, basketball, baseball and any other sports – at least aside from the local high school level. Once I neared turning 30 I found out about an “Over 30” league where essentially all the local legends went to be remembered one last time. The league had all the top players who still resided in the area participating from ages of 30 to nearly 50 (but leaned heavily on the mid 30 year old range). It was your basic “Sunday League” in which players would roll in around kickoff and stick around after games to drink beers and heckle the players in the next match. The biggest difference from a relaxed Sunday league is that this league featured some of the biggest once-youth talents around, and while now older and slightly withered, no one’s ego had depleted in the slightest. While it was a casual league hosting only a few teams, no one took it lightly and each game was a bloodbath of shoulder chips dating back to old high school rivalries.
Teams were constantly on the lookout for new players as you could officially join the league at the age of 29 (as long as you’d turn 30 within that year) and players didn’t change their team stripes often. I was actually recruited just after turning 29 to join a team in which I knew well. The team was called “Black Oaks” and was sponsored by a local bar downtown. Most of the players were just a little older than me but were associated with my friend group. They’d also recruited several other players and friends around my age as well, now all being eligible to play. I decided to join as I was open to more soccer and my work schedule was quite flexible. I spent most of my first year with the team arriving to games Sunday morning quite hungover, if not still drunk, compliments of some party I’d hosted the night before in San Francisco. It was a bit of a bumpy season and I wasn’t able to attend many games overall.
Given the league only has a handful of teams we did make a run in the playoffs but fell short to one of our rivals. My second year with the team I was a bit more present although I didn’t do anything to stand out on the pitch, usually switching between defense and forward as needed. The league had acquired a few new players and the competitive level had risen just slightly. Our older players took the game pretty seriously but our real talent came from a handful of players in their mid 30s who would make rare appearances throughout the season. Our team did pretty good throughout the season and we made the playoffs in a high seeding, eventually finding ourselves in the semi finals against our rivals who had relinquished us the year prior.
As kickoff neared it looked like we’d be in for a tough match in which both teams had called in their ringers. The game itself wasn’t particularly exciting but the takeaway was that at one point I received and took the ball wide to attempt a cross into the box. In doing so I accidentally missed most of the ball and instead struck my foot into a large portion of the grass pitch that we played on.
Instantly I could feel a splitting pain shoot up my leg and into my groin. Being the competitor I am and typically looking down on injuries, I limped it off and continued playing. One of my secret superpowers is my ability to generate so much adrenaline when I’m doing something that I pretty much turn into a juggernaut. I’ve used this ability several times throughout my life especially in sporting situations. More or less my body can go numb and pain becomes nonexistent to me. It can be a blessing and curse. I’ve surely made some injuries much worse by powering through it without realizing the severity of it. I once rolled my ankle super bad in a youth tournament and for whatever reason my dad let me tape my ankle using electrical tape and essentially used my leg more as a numb peg allowing me to somewhat compete in an important game. First off, using electrical tape to tape your ankle is pretty unheard of as it isn’t meant for that and has no give. Secondly, I had absolutely no idea how to even tape an ankle which resulted in me taping from my toes to nearly halfway up my shin.
On another occasion I was playing in San Francisco and chased a ball out of bounds where I ran across a pavement sidewalk, slipping and completely rolling my ankle. I shrugged it off and completed the game eventually having to witness my ankle turning into a rather large grapefruit throughout the evening. I had a game the next day with a different team and decided to simply tape it tight the following day. This time around using actual athletic tape but still not knowing how to actually tape an ankle, I attempted to play a full game ignoring any pain. With an already injured and weak ankle I rerolled twice more in that second game alone. This left me with not only the inability to walk for two weeks, but also a black and blue and largely swollen foot. Nonetheless I finished and played the full time of both games.
Alright, you get the point, let’s get back on track… After basically kicking straight into the ground, I strained or pulled my groin. We’ll never know what the actual injury was because I ignored it for an entire week hoping it would just go away set on performing in the league finals the coming weekend. The weekend quickly snuck up on me and my groin was nowhere closer to being healed. I literally couldn’t walk normal and any kind of athletic movements hurt quite a bit. My dad continued to play his double-faced card in which he encouraged me to rest my leg and sit out for the finals, but I knew the result of that would be some super passive aggressive comments about my weakness and the fact that I had given up. Years of this treatment had made me anything but a quitter. My solution was to nearly OD on painkillers and participate in the game anyhow. The team manager chose to start me at the attacking midfield position and within the first 60 minutes I somehow succeeded in scoring 2 goals and had 1 assist in spite of not really being any to feel anything. We were currently up 3-2 as minute 70 started to roll around. The drugs had worked wonders overall but were now beginning to wear off. The pain in my groin was creeping back and was much more intensified than previously. Not wanting to let my team down, I proceeded to limp around the pitch and somehow made it all the way to minute 90 where I fell to the ground as the final whistle blew knowing I wouldn’t be walking much, let alone playing any soccer for the next few weeks. The victory tasted as good as any and I was able to make it to the team photo with the assistance of some teammates. To this day I’ve done some stupid things and definitely haven’t treated my body like a temple, but one thing is for sure, if you ever need that guy who will put it all on the line for a win, you know who to call.
