Sporting Memories: Being on the same team a rather hated rival

For the most part in my life my sporting memories have been good ones. I excelled at nearly every sport that I got involved in with the one and only exception being baseball which for some reason, I just couldn't get good at. While I was above average or even excellent in most sports, the one I excelled at the most was football of the soccer variety. From quite a young age I just kind of mastered the sport and would be rather dominant on any team that I played on. I gained notoriety even at just 10 years of age and I believe that if that sort of thing had existed in the USA at the time, that I would have been scouted by an MLS academy. It probably sounds like I am tooting my own horn here but seriously, I was that good and it eventually lead to me getting a full-ride athletic scholarship upon graduation from high-school.

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My family moved a lot when I was in elementary and high school, so I ended up playing for 3 different high school teams. One of them was in St. Charles Illinois at St. Charles High School. Prior to moving to this rather distant suburb of Chicago, I had always attended rather small schools in rather small towns. This high school was absolutely enormous and had close to a thousand students. To say that it was a bit intimidating for me would be an understatement but the school was so large that the school actually had 6 high school boys' soccer teams. As a freshman, the skill was evident in me and I was put on the "B" team Varsity. This is something that almost never happens for a freshman and the other boys on the team were 2,3, or even 4 years older than me. This doesn't matter that much once you are an adult but it was a very big deal when you are 13 and significantly smaller than the other people on the team.

Regardless, I made the team and it really didn't come as much of a surprise that I was picked on a bit by the older players for a couple of reasons: One, I was brand new to the school and teenagers are extremely cruel to newcomers for the most part and two, because there was some resentment that a freshman would be on a team that was comprised almost entirely of seniors.

Rather than try to fight with these guys, I let my abilities in the sport do the talking / fighting for me. These guys quickly learned that I was an asset to the team and I was actually a lot better than most of the others on the team. There was one boy though, that took my presence as much more of an insult than the others though.

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His name was Tristan and even though it has been over 30 years since I have seen the guy I can still see his face and the aggression and rage he had towards me about not just being on the same team as him, but from me taking his field time away from him because I was better than him.

While it might not be so rare these days or perhaps never was outside of the United States, I was able to play and cross with both my right and left feet. Most people favor one or the other but I was just as effective at both. Because of this I was placed in a starting left midfielder position and this was the same position that Tristan had been in for many years because he was "left footed." Not many people were left-footed back in those days or perhaps even now but Tristan was a sought after player because of this. Seeing someone much younger than him come in and take "his" spot really got under his skin.

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Tristan's bullying of me was much worse off the field than it was on it because in the hallways and outside the school there wasn't the presence of the coaches to keep kids in line. I was slammed into a locker many times by this guy as he attempted to goad me into a fist fight routinely. I never took the bait though because he would have cleaned my clock. I just kind of took it and in a way, this inability to fight back in the hallways pushed me to excel even MORE in the hopes that Tristan's field time wouldn't just be reduced, but perhaps eliminated.

Tristan eventually was completely removed from the left midfielder position unless I was tired and he would normally play 1/4 or 1/2 of a game in a left back position - a position that he did NOT like playing especially since he had to constantly be looking at my back as we progressed down the field. On many occasions he would intentionally not pass the ball to me and would cause turnovers because he didn't want to give me the ball under any circumstance. This resulted in him receiving even less field time though because no coach wants a defender on the field that is constantly turning the ball over when the teammate they should have passed the ball to was right in front of him.

In one particular game, I botched a corner and hit Tristan in the back of his head with the ball.... HARD. I did not do this on purpose. Despite being on the same team Tristan went after me and attacked me on the field in the middle of a game. Our brawl was broken up by our teammates, the ref, and even members of the other team. It was embarrassing but there was no doubt who was at fault here. The ref showed Tristan a red card and later, he was severely reprimanded in the locker room in front of the other teammates and also in private. It was a humbling moment for him and not soon thereafter, Tristan was demoted to the "C" team.

I'd like to say that we rectified our differences and became good pals shortly thereafter, but that wasn't really what happened. The bullying in the hallways stopped because Tristan himself was getting bullied by other members of the "B" team that felt the need to protect me. I didn't ask for this but I suspect maybe the coach caught wind of this and asked some of the other team members to look out for me. I was, after all, an asset to his team and he wanted me in good shape for the games.

My family would move to yet another city later that year after the season was over so I don't know what ended up happening to Tristan. I would imagine that he didn't go to college for free because of football though. He was already an upper classman and he had been completely overshadowed by someone that in high-school terms anyway, was significantly younger than he was. I never had anything against the guy and it was never my choice to take his position - I was simply better at it than he was. I hope he went on to enjoy his life but in all of my time on this planet I have met very few people with so much rage in them. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if he ended up in prison.

I didn't at the time because I was a kid too and was really the victim in this situation, but looking back I really feel bad for the guy.