Well, Kurt has given me (Zach) another opportunity to take control of the Long View for this month and tell everyone more about myself. As Kurt wrote about his love for basketball last month, I figured it would only be right for me to use this month to write about the sport I love, soccer.
My mom says I started walking with a soccer ball between my feet, which I definitely believe at this point.
I started playing recreational soccer when I was three, and as I got older, I started playing competitively until I graduated high school. While I played, I was a goalkeeper. Being a goalkeeper can be a lonely world. You must be calm, yet also crazy. You must be ready to take a lot of the blame if you lose and sometimes barely any praise if you win. The main thing you must be, though, is dependable. You see more than anyone else on the field, so you must be able to communicate to everyone what you are seeing, sometimes even before it happens.
As soon as I graduated high school and no longer played competitively, I still had the itch to be a part of a team.
This is when I got into coaching. Just a year after graduating high school, while I was still going to UCF, I was able to join the coaching staff at George Jenkins High School. I would say some of my favorite memories from the soccer field have come from the sideline rather than being on the field itself. As a coach, I think my love for winning has grown from what it was as a player. I get to see each day how much effort the team puts in to get better, and on those nights that we win, how much it means to them. Having the opportunity to get to share in those celebrations with them is awesome.
This high school season recently just came to an end for this year’s team.
We made it all the way to the Regional Semi-Finals, which were just 16 teams left in our class in the state. While a great accomplishment, it still hurts to lose that last game of the season. For some of the guys, it will be the last time they play a competitive game like that, but as their coach and former player in that position, it is part of my responsibility to pick them up and keep them going.
I see the work Kurt and I do as very similar to coaching.
Each family (player) is different. Some players need more help from the coaching staff than others. In the end, though, we are all on the same team with the same goal. We want to get better each day, and in the end, we want to win.
February 2025
