“I’ve been playing soccer since I was 3 years old.

Being on the school team allows me to do something I enjoy after school and have a great time playing the sport I love.

I’ve been on the [soccer] team since I was a freshman. [Though] we’ve had three coaches over the course of four years, I don’t think much has changed over the years on the team. The players have come and gone, but overall the excitement about soccer has always been there. The supporters have been there. I think it’s just something a lot of people and I look forward to and all of the players are always excited to go out there and represent our school.

Being captain of the [soccer] team isn’t really something you choose. A lot of times, the captains are appointed because other players look up to them. They’re the ones who are able to step up and be responsible for the rest of the guys. You get to work with the coach to come up with tactics and plan practices to decide what’s best for the team. I enjoyed it. I got good experience building leadership skills that I can use after high school as well.

It can be pretty tough balancing soccer with school, though. Lots of games and practices add up, and [soccer] definitely takes away time to work on homework, projects and studying. It is manageable, but it requires good time management skills.

If I were to do it all over again, I would definitely spend more time and effort on encouraging the team to give its [all] during practices. We wasted a lot of days and missed a lot of opportunities. If we had emphasized that more, we would have had better results in playoffs and maybe even won a district championship.

Though I’ve loved being on the [soccer] team and being captain, I’ve decided that playing soccer in college is not a realistic goal. I’ve suffered some injuries and had to get two surgeries throughout my high school career. Instead, I’ll be attending Northeastern [University] studying computer science, but I look [forward] to playing soccer on the club team there and for fun too.”