This past labor day weekend, I took a trip to Dallas, Texas for a soccer tournament. I left with my parents and my brother Friday afternoon at around 6:00p.m.

   As we were making our way to Dallas, about two hours into the trip, a huge 18 wheeler truck flipped over, so there was a gigantic traffic jam. We were stuck in traffic for about an hour and a half. I remember seeing people sitting on chairs outside of their cars because the cars would not move at all. With all this going on, I have my super tired and hungry father yelling in the front seat, but at least my mom and my brother were sound asleep, and I just put on my best friends, my headphones. At around 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. we finally passed the traffic and made it to the hotel at around 1:00 a.m.

   Six hours later, I had to wake up because my first game was at 8:00 in the morning. All I had to eat was a banana and a glass of orange juice. When I stepped onto the field it was extremely sunny, you know the usual Texas weather, it was about 98 degrees, so by the end of the game everyone even the parents were dying. It was a really close game, we were losing 1-0 in the second half with five minutes left until one of my teammates stepped up and curled a beautiful free kick into the top right corner. The game later ended in a 1-1 draw.

   After my first game, my whole team and I went to go have a great breakfast at the one and only Chik-fil-a.  We had our second and final game of the day at 2 p.m. This was supposedly going to be our toughest opponent of the whole tournament. We went into halftime tied 1-1, but that all changed in the second half when our team got a penalty with 1 minute left. I stepped up and took the challenge of this extremely pressurized moment.

   The referee handed me the ball and I set it down and just looked at the goalkeeper while he tried to taunt me saying “Hey, don’t miss” but he didn’t know that his “taunting” words only wanted me to score even more. I start running up to shoot the ball while already having where I want to shoot picked out. Then, I shoot and score! Everybody went absolutely crazy, and what I was feeling was indescribable. The game ended in a 2-1 win for my team, and with that score we would move on to the quarter finals.

   “This could be our last game,” my coach pounded into our heads.

   We knew we had to play like never before to win this one, even after those massive burgers we ate the night before at Scotty P’s. The game went into an intense halftime with a 0-0 scoreline. But not to much later our opponent scored what was the only goal in the match to send us home because one loss meant elimination. We weren’t happy with our performances, but we knew we gave the game all we had. What really threw us off was the four hour ride back home after a devastating loss.
I’d say it was an okay Labor day weekend. We had fun on the car ride, had really good food and went pretty far in the tournament even though I knew, as well as my whole team knew, that we could’ve made it farther than what we did. But, we’ll come back stronger next year.