A Senior's Farewell

As I sat in the men’s locker room at Foster Field here at Virginia Wesleyan College, I realized that my soccer playing career was over. We had just lost to Lynchburg College in the first round of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference tournament, and I realized that I probably would never play soccer in a competitive nature again. I sat in my locker looked around the locker room and reminisced about the joyous and painful memories that I have shared with my teammates in my three years at VWC.

I sat there and thought about when I first showed up at VWC about how I thought I was going to come in and play right away, because it was a Division III school and I was transferring from a Division II school. I soon found out that I was very wrong.

That first year for me was a difficult one, and I learned many things from it. I had to figure out how to play soccer and balance my grades at the same time, it was a new challenge for me. Even though my grades weren’t what I wished them to be, the soccer team did better than I expected. After cruising through the regular season being ranked as high as No. 2 in the nation and with only one loss from Washington & Lee University, we were ready for our first round game of the ODAC tournament.

It was a cold rainy day in November and the team gathered to have a lunch comprised of ham sandwiches and granola bars. We all sat, and ate the oh so delicious sandwiches from the cafeteria, and talked about how bad we wanted to beat Randolph-Macon College in the game. But that was where things took a turn for the worse. The head coach Sonny Travis came into the room and gave us the bad news. We were told that we had to forfeit the game due to playing with an ineligible player in the previous game. So we sat there and realized that our season could be over at that point. We asked questions like, what can we do now? But the thing was that it was out of our hands and we had to get some help from other teams around the nation in order to get an at-large bid into the national tournament. But the help never came. Teams that we expected to win their conference tournament didn’t and that left us out in the rain without a bid into the national tournament. My first year of soccer at VWC was over. I felt bad for the seniors that never had the chance to compete for a national championship, when it was clear that we were a quality competitive team.

As my second season started for the Marlins, I knew coming in that I would not get a lot of playing time due to the fact that Sean Wheaton, the starting goalkeeper, was in his senior year and became one of the best goalkeepers that VWC has ever produced. We started out the year with not a very good record at 3-2-0, but after we lost our own tournament we turned a new leaf over and rattled off 12 straight wins, including a stretch of eight straight shutouts, produced by the goalkeepers. Sean would mostly get the credit for this accomplishment but our No. 3 goalkeeper Matt Gilespie and I did get some time in the goal during that period. The funny thing about the goalkeeper situation that year was that we had three quality goalkeepers that could start in goal at any other team in the ODAC conference. We rolled through the regular season of conference games with our only loss coming to Lynchburg College in a game where we were not mentally prepared for it. But after winning the regular season ODAC title we were primed for the ODAC tournament as the No. 1 seed.

We avenged our only ODAC loss of the season in the first round by dismantling Lynchburg 5-1. After some big upsets in the tournament many lower-seeded teams were still alive. We next took on Randolph-Macon College which we handled nicely at a score of 5-1. In both of the first two games of the tournament, the coach was able to get me into goal because we were leading by so much. It was nice to get into the game. It was almost like a reward for working so hard during the regular season. The senior class this year had been the only class to miss an ODAC title, so going into the final game of the tournament, the team wanted to perform. Fortunately for us we had to go through Washington & Lee University to get that title. With a late goal against W & L to go up 3-1 we knew that we had the ODAC in our grasp. The referee blew the final whistle and the party was on.

We rushed the field, piled on top of each other and celebrated. The feeling was sweet and it was another step in a life time goal of mine, to get into the NCAA national championship tournament. After having a great record through the regular season and winning our conference tournament, we found out on selection Sunday that we didn’t have a bye in the first round and had to play Eastern University from Penn. Lucky for us, we didn’t have to travel for the Wednesday game and were able to stay at home, while Eastern had to travel five hours. A home field advantage meant we could go on with our regular schedule while the other team had to worry about traveling and staying in an unfamiliar place like a hotel the night before.

After dominating the first half of the game and being up 2-0 at halftime, we felt that we were in great position to win the game. But Eastern didn’t just lie down and quit they cameback to tie the game and sent it into overtime. In the first overtime we were fortunate to get the game winning goal off of a header from Steve Leahy. We had moved on to the next round, but this meant for us to go on the road and deal with the issues of playing in a hostile environment.

We left the day after the Eastern game for Drew University in New Jersey. After a grueling eight hour bus ride due to weather that made us go a longer route we finally made it to Drew and the forty-degree weather that met us. We woke in our hotel on Friday to a vibrant sense through the team. We met for breakfast down in the lobby of our $200-a-night hotel, and there was a swagger about the whole team. Like we were ready to go out and dominate. We got on the bus to Drew, and the only thing we were thinking about was bad we wanted to win. We got to the school and waited on the bus for longer than we were use to. Then we got the word: due to high winds, the games were postponed until Saturday. This took the same wind right out of our sails, and we weren’t the same team with the same energy the next day. We had played four games in seven days; having a day in which we practiced when we expected to play weakened us, and we lost 3-0 on Saturday. My second season was over, but I could notice a difference in my play-it was more skilled and mature than the previous year. With Wheaton graduating I knew that the starting spot was mine to lose.

I trained hard during the off season and even got a job with a traveling soccer camp company, to help prepare for my senior year. I did my last week of work just one week prior to coming back to school for preseason. As I was training the younger goalkeepers, I felt a twinge in my groin. I had pulled a groin muscle. I showed up to preseason in good shape, but my groin prevented me from being able to work at the high rate I needed. Coach told me to sit until I was healed. Every day when the rest of the team was training, I was in the training room getting treatment. It was a painful two and a half weeks, not only rehab but also watching my teammates play. We struggled through the rest of the year, going 6-2-1 in the ODAC and 10-5-3 overall. Although we were a young team we got big goals when we needed them but let many teams back into games we should have won handily. After seeing many upperclassmen quit because their playing time wasn’t what they expected, I sat and thought about doing the same. I told myself to stick it out and see where the season went.

Finally, on Oct. 2 on VWC’s homecoming game against Lynchburg, I made my first career college start. I had achieved another one of my lifetime goals. We won the game 3-1, which started a streak of 5-1-1 in our last seven games to end the season. However two games later I was kicked in the hand during a match against Roanoke College and had to come out at half time.

I never started or played another game at VWC. I sat on the bench the rest of the year watching as younger players rose to the occasion and picked up big goals for us.

So there I was sitting in the locker that I called home for three years. I grabbed the only pair of soccer boots that I showed up to VWC with, a pair of Adidas Kaiser 5 Cup screw-in boots. I tied the laces together, turned around, hung them in my locker, and walked out of the locker room for the last time.