Mentor Quote/ Saved – Jhan Pesantez

My story is about how soccer saved me. I will be using scenes from my high school soccer game and my time in high school.

It’s always so exciting to go afterschool to my school’s soccer practice. Upon arriving, I would see my teammates who were sitting on the bench getting ready for practice, changing and putting on their cleats. My teammates, who I can also call my friends, would always make me feel welcome. Everyday on the synthetic grass running, tackling, shooting, and playing with everyone is always so fun but also tiring. All of us with the same goal to become better players. Even in school my friends would always greet me and talk to me in the hallways or in class. Alexis who was one of my close friends would always check up on me to see how I’m doing, “Como estas primo, todo bien?”. I wasn’t expecting to make any friends in high school, but with soccer I was able to get to know many people who always have my back.

One day in my junior year, it was an important game that we had to win today. We all traveled in car, my friends would blast music, waving their hands, singing to the music , and just having fun. When we arrive to the field, everyone starts to focus, getting ready for the game. I was starter and was good enough to play first. I felt many emotions, so much excitement but really nervous. The other team was known to play really well and that made me to bein doubting myself and it lowered my confidence for a bit.

Game was on we had the ball first and we keep possession of the ball. Time goes by and no one has scored yet. Pass by pass, many hard tackles, lots of sweat and running, this game was intense. However I wasn’t playing well how I usually play, I made many mistakes and with each mistake I made the lower my confidence would go down. Eventually near the end of the first half, I slowly started giving up and getting so angry at myself. Some situations like this happened in other games but not this bad to the point where my confidence is gone. My coach started noticing my actions and how I was reacting. He called for a substitute to go in but little did I know he subbing me out of the game. “What, why coach” I rarely get subbed out, the only times I get subbed out was cause we were winning by a lot so we let other players play. As I was coming out I was expecting words of disappointment from my coach cause I knew I was playing bad. However he pulled me to the side to talk with me said something I would always remember to think about every time. “You are way better than this Jhan, I know your an amazing player, I want you to always be confident in yourself buddy and give everything you got when your out there like your life depends on it, and not just on the field, in anything you do in life, always believe in yourself in what you do” Those words of encouragement gave me so much motivation and energy, I now knew what I was missing to get better. Belief to be the best out there.