Our Championship… One Month Later

One month ago, my power soccer team was on top of the world. We had just brought home our first national club title and earned promotion to the next level of competitive power soccer in the United States. As I reflect on that experience, it still makes me smile. I was confident going into the event, but victory was far from certain. There were plenty of good teams in the field who had a legitimate chance of winning. We even lost our first match to the very talented RHI Inferno. That was the final match we would lose, but every match provided its own unique obstacles to overcome as we learned to work as a cohesive unit throughout the weekend.

I could not have written the script any better if I tried, and I was brought back to my high school English class, where we learned about Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. While our journey did not exactly follow all the steps, I found myself going through the motions of the last few steps of Campbell’s return.

Our 14-hour car ride home served as a crossing back over the threshold to the ordinary world. If the journey begins after the hero receives the call, might refuse it, but ultimately decides to cross the threshold, the end of the journey involves crossing back over that threshold, into the ordinary world.

People were so kind when we returned home. I have received so many nice words and messages from people around me who were excited about our accomplishment. I greatly appreciate how many people were excited for my teammates and me. So many people told me how they watched online as we competed in the championship. It was the first time many of them had watched a power soccer video. I love how much support we had.

However, when you come home and get back into your daily routine, you realize the bright lights have been turned off, and you are now out of that special world. The special world will return next year when we return to nationals, but for now, it only lives on in memory.

I don’t mean this to be a depressing post. Rather, it is an elevation of the specialness of certain times. In the hero’s journey, the hero does not just return to the ordinary as the same person who left. Ideally, the hero has grown through the adversity he has overcome. Very much like Daniel LaRusso in the Karate Kid, the tournament is over, but he is a better person because of what he went through.

I don’t know that I had that type of personal transformation at nationals, but I cannot deny its impact and the joy it brought me. When I returned to the ordinary world of my office cubicle, I put my medal above my computer. I now see it every day as I do my normal things. My memories are going to fade, and the specific details will probably disappear. Some of them already have. However, Ray Bradbury shares this beautiful passage in his novel Dandelion Wine about remembering summer, which I think applies to my case as well.

“June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past. And if he should forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar, numbered huge for each and every day. He would go there often, stare straight into the sun until he could stare no more, then close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting scars left dancing on his warm eyelids; arranging, rearranging each fire and reflection until the pattern was clear....”

It may be over, but I can remember the joy and the thrill. Not only that, but I can use that joy as motivation next year to experience it again. I’m just so grateful to have a chance to play a sport and to have been on this journey since the spring of 2010.