My Biggest Sports Moment

Soccer has been a part of my life for 20 years having been a former player and currently as a high school soccer coach. My biggest sports moment came during my college soccer career of my junior year.

I played college soccer at a Division 1 school for all 4 years, and I grew a lot throughout the whole experience. Every year that I played , the program progressed, and my junior year was our best season ever for the school. That year, the team broke school records and season records, and we we're all playing so well together. The incoming freshman made such an impact, teammates were actually listening to each other, our team chemistry was great, and me and one of the seniors were team co-captains. I played sweeper, center defense, for our team this year and at the end of the previous year.

Playing college soccer was mentally and physically challenging and exhausting. There was still time to have fun with my friends and go out to parties, but time management and not procrastinating were the key elements to keeping my grades up. Being responsible as player and as a teammate was definitely needed to be on and part of a successful team. I learned how to balance school, soccer, friends, and relationships very well throughout college, and I feel like the women's soccer team taught me about that kind of stuff.

My biggest sports moment in my life happened in Hammond, Louisiana at the end of November 2004 in our conference championship soccer game. It happened a while ago, but I can pretty much recall every game in the conference tournament that led up to the championship game. We were down in South Louisiana to play in the Southland Conference Tournament, where we ended up being the 4th place team out of 7 teams going into the tournament. The games were single elimination, which meant that if your team lost, your team was done.

The games leading up to the championship game were so intense and so physical. We won our first conference game 4-3, then we won our second conference game 2-1, and then our third game was the championship game. I will never forget this game; we were playing Texas State who we had already beat twice that season, but the third game against the same team is one of the hardest mentally. This game went into overtime, where the score after regulation was 0-0. Half way into overtime, the other team received a corner kick and scored off of it. That is how the game ended, we lost 1-0. This was by far the biggest sports moment of my life. Winning the conference championship gets your team into the NCAA tournament. We were so close to accomplishing this goal for our team and for the soccer program, but our dreams fell short. I will never forget this experience.

College soccer and being part of a team has left me with so many good times, experiences, lessons, and friends, and I would never change anything.