Who needs sleep? Think about soccer.

Sunday nights are generally the worst. I have trouble sleeping on most nights, but Sundays tend to be a little worse. I've relaxed all weekend, maybe stayed up a little longer than normal, and now I have to try to shutdown my brain for a couple hours of sleep, knowing that the alarm will be going off around 6:30am. Then Monday comes.

Last night I ended up drifting off to sleep after 1:06am (the last time I remember on the clock). I was catching up on a little reading for school (I'm in a Master's program), but found that once the light went out, all I could think about was the soccer game from earlier in the day. The game on Saturday did not keep me up Saturday night, but Sunday's game certainly played over and over in my mind.

On Saturday, I blew a wide open goal by deflecting a pass wide from about two feet away. I thought for certain that this would bother me through the evening, however it was virtually forgotten a few hours later. But it was the Sunday game that kept me awake. In a 3-2 loss, I scored a goal, made the assist on the other goal, and had another assist taken away when the goal was over-turned. About five minute into the game, I took a pass that the defender let slip, kicked once up-field with my right, brought it back to my left and found about five feet between a defender, the goalie and the post, and rifled a left-foot shot just past the goalie. My first goal of the season (scored six in eight games with five assists last season). In the second half, took a brilliant corner-kick, where I bent the kick out of bounds and brought it back over the top of the goal, but it just clipped the top of the crossbar. A teammate headed the ball in, but it was ruled out-of-bounds. Then as time expired, I sent another corner to the near post, and the waiting foot of a teammate for my assist.

And this is one of the reasons we still play sports as we get older: the thrill of scoring. After that assist, and as the incredibly respected ref blew the whistle, I congratulated the mate who scored, saying, "Small victories, small victories.' We lost the game, but in that one moment, we scored and celebrated. Some of us still play to win, and yes, in my mind last night I thought of twenty problems, or plays where we could have had a shot on goal, or made a pass, and I had visions of what I could have done with a few more shots... I want to win. But just getting a high-five, or a congratulations on a goal, or a good pass... to have the ref compliment you on your sportsmanship and solid play.... there is no pressure to perform, at least in this league. You miss a kick, you make fun of yourself and forget about it. And for a competitive person like myself, I was amazed at how easily this weekend went from 'I completely missed a wide open kick,' to 'Hey, I scored and got an assist.' A younger me would have thought forever on the first game, and probably would have affected my second game. But as an adult, now it's all about having a good time, and if you score... then you are just a little lucky.

- Tom.