My dream is to play soccer my whole life. As a late bloomer, college soccer seemed like a good route. And for the reason of having a backup and also pleasing my parents, getting a good college education was a smart decision. When moving from youth soccer to the pro game through college, most college soccer players that go pro come from NCAA Division 1 schools. So that was the goal. However, I failed. But I learned a ton in the process. I went into the recruiting process not as open-minded as I should’ve. I would discredit potential opportunities before I saw them through. This leads me to a great piece of advice that my dad always tells me, “The most important thing is the next opportunity (or the current one).” Anyway, my search was limited by my limited mindset which left out options that could’ve maybe have been great. And when I attended camps I wasn’t properly prepared for some and for the ones that I was, they opened up some doors to schools that I didn’t even know existed. This is pretty much how I ended up at Muhlenberg. But, through Muhlenberg I’ve gotten time to develop and mature. It also set me up with good connections to play on a good team over summer where I constantly compete with and against a lot of players better than me at better schools. And this is where my failure is turning into success because I’ve learned that every opportunity is what you make of it and opportunities can be found anywhere.
Will I re-evaluate my goal of playing Division 1? Maybe. I think about it sometimes. But again, there are opportunities everywhere, and some that may be even better. So again, following my dad’s advice, I just take things one step at a time, making the most of the opportunity at hand.
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