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Jazmin Bermudez
Professor Jackie Hymes
English 115, M/W 11-12:15
22 September 2014
Burst of Laughter
I have been playing soccer since I was four years old and continued to play until I reached
eighteen. It was not about until I was eight when I got into club soccer which most people and
players consider the real deal. Before reaching that stage I played what the soccer world calls
AYSO which is basically recreational soccer, which means it was just for fun and you get a
participation trophy. When I turned eight I was picked to play on the AYSO All star team, which
to me was a big deal and was a significant day for little eight year old me. After a couple games I
got noticed by a club coach, he then convinced my parents to allow me to join his club and that
instant is when soccer took over my life. Club soccer is extremely different from AYSO, it's
taken way more seriously and your life will constantly be soccer, with practice every day and
traveling to games far away every weekend. Ever since then I had been playing club soccer, then
high school soccer came along and everything completely changed.
High school soccer is a combination of both AYSO and club, it's not as serious but yet you
have a bunch of different club players playing on the same team. If you want to play soccer in
college, club is where you are most likely to be scouted which is why players take club more
seriously. In high school soccer some players take it more seriously than other because of
something called CIF and because of the pride it brings with being on the team, but most see it as
a break from club, which I did. As a freshman playing on varsity, it was kind of scary because I
was a 14 year old playing with 18 year olds so that transition was overwhelming. Nonetheless I

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got over it because there were 7 other freshman with me. After a month or two our very first over
night tournament was coming up in San Francisco and I was super excited. It was a tradition to
go to that tournament and the girls would tell us it's a great experience and bring lots of
memories. Usually with tournaments with club soccer I would stay in hotel rooms with my
parents, and in high school you stay with your teammates so that was making it even more
exciting for me. There was also the fact that we all ride together to the tournament which I never
did with my club team, instead with high school we rent a charter bus and the whole team goes
together. Lastly my least exciting part for the tournament was the hazing. At this tournament is
when the upper classmen haze the freshman, it's not bad your stereotypical bad hazing, but more
on the fun side, sort of. Other than that I was really excited for this tournament.
The weekend of the tournament finally arrived and I could not have been more excited. We
would be staying at the Marriott in the city of Walnut Creek for 3 days and taking an enormous
charter bus there, which is basically a tour bus. I arrived at school on Friday at 8 in the morning
all snuggled in a blanket ready to go. I said goodbye to parents and hello to somewhat freedom
for the next 3 days. After an hour or so we embarked on our 6 hour journey to the tournament
and for the first 30 minutes my teammates and I argued over what movie to watch. We finally
decided on Death at a Funeral, not the American version though, the British one. The movies
was actually very funny from what I remember except we didn't get some of the British slang.
After the movie ended we all decided to go to sleep, so we slept for about 2 hours and were all
woken by the growls of our hungry stomach's. We then stopped at a Subway and also had a
bathroom break, but there was a bathroom in the bus so we never actually stopped specifically to
use the bathroom. After eating we hopped back on the extremely hot bus and continued our
journey. For the remaining time everybody did their own thing like listen to music, sleep, or

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share stories. Finally we arrived around 7 pm, checked into the hotel, got settled, and decided to
go out to dinner. However the upper classmen had a certain dress code for this dinner for us
freshman, aka the hazing. All of them brought embarrassing clothes and tons of makeup to
plaster on us. The tournament was around Christmas time so they dressed us in Christmas colors,
drew on our faces, and made us practice Christmas carols which we found odd. However we
thought this was going to be the only part of the hazing but it wasn't, the seniors then proceeded
to tell us we would have to go to dinner dressed like buffoons and sing Christmas carols to the
families inside the restaurant. Let's just cut to the chase and say it was the most embarrassing
thing in my life and that's how the night ended.
The next day is when the actual tournament began. We had two games in the morning and
one in the afternoon. I was nervous for the first game for no reason but those first game jitters
always kick in. I played well and we won all 3 games, however each games was really close with
one game ending the score with 2-1 and the other two 1-0. Because we won all three games it
secured us a spot in the semi finals, which werent until the next day.
We were awaken by the sound of the telephone ringing, our coach was calling to wake us up
and go have breakfast. My first thought was Omg we made it to the semifinals for my first high
school tournament and the second was Im so hungry, my stomach is eating itself. Then I
went down to the lobby to stuff my face with food, because breakfast is my favorite. After
breakfast we took off to the game. The bus ride was more serious than previous ones, we were
told to just think about the game and get in the zone, I was blasting a Eminem song through my
earphones and watching everybody stare out the window with a serious face just thinking about
the game. We finally got to the fields, did our 1 hour warm up that we all despised, and went on
the field ready to play. We got into our huddle that we do for every game and our captains went

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on to give inspirational speeches to get us pumped for the game. The ref blew the whistle for us
to take our positions, and then the game began. I got my first touch on the ball 5 minutes in and
the other team was right on my tail, breathing down my neck and pushing me as soon as I passed
the ball. I then knew this was going to be an aggressive game and I had to get into the right
mentality. The first half was done and we went to our 10 minute half time, our coach sat us down
and described to us the weakness of the opposing team and how we were going to use it against
them, he then went on to tell us what we needed to improve on. The ref blew his whistle and
once again we ran onto the field. The second half was much more aggressive than the first, I
couldnt get a touch on the ball without the enemy brushing her sweaty arms against mine and
trying to take out my ankles. I remember looking at one of my teammates and her just giving me
the worried be careful look. The game was so leveled that we went into extra time, which is
another two halves of 15 minutes. During the second 15 minute half, my entire body was aching
and my legs felt as if they weighed about a 100 pounds, I looked at my captain to see if she felt
the pain I did and her scrunched up, red, sweaty face confirmed it. All I wanted was for it to end,
I even started thinking about sitting in the warm comfy bus and being able to put my legs up.
Nonetheless, I carried on ignoring every ounce of pain, dragging my body along hardly able to
breathe. But not even those extra minutes set us apart, which meant penalty kicks. Penalty kicks
are the most stressful event known to mankind, and it amplifies when it's an important game.
They way we won the PKs is the absolute funniest thing of my entire life, it was the other teams
turn and if our keeper blocked the shot, we won. The walk to get to the penalty spot feels like a
mile along and you can just feel everyone's eyes on you, so I can only imagine it feels 10 times
worse when youre the deciding shot. The girl made her way to the penalty spot, the ref handed
her the ball and mumbled something usually they say "good luck" and she then placed the ball on

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the white circle and took a few steps back while looking at our goalie. She stood there for about
3 seconds and the ref blew the whistle, it fell dead silent for about 2 seconds and the girl took 3
steps forward, swung her leg back and took her shot. It felt like slow motion as I saw the ball
floating up to hit the inside of the left post and then bounce back towards our goalie who was
looking directly at the ball that was coming right towards her face, and eventually it did meet her
face. I then burst into laughter and I could hear some other snickers and cheers and all of my
teammates ran to our goalie like you see in the movies and tackled her asking her while laughing
if her face was okay. That moment was probably one of the funniest moments of my life.
We then went on to play the championship game, and lost 2- 1 and we were pretty sad but
that's not the important part. The important part is our goalie blocked a PK with her face and won
us the game. That weekend is one of my favorite memories not only because of our goalie but
because it was my first high school soccer tournament. It was the weekend where I was dressed
in horrible clothing and had drawings all over my face and was forced to sing Christmas carols to
strangers. It was the weekend where I established a bond with my teammates. That weekend
holds several memories and some of the greatest in my life so far.