SOCCER: My Journey
Ever since I was little, I was always a big fan of soccer. My entire family revolves around the sport, I would say it is the sport of the family. Everyone loves to watch it and everyone loves to play it too. I first began to play soccer in third grade. In fact, when I was in 4th grade, I made a soccer team with a group of friends and had my dad as our coach. Eventually, after moving around so much, I had stop playing soccer when I got to 5th grade. The reason why was because there was no team in the school that I went to in Libya. After leaving Libya and coming to Lima, I really started to dedicate myself to playing soccer and was very interested in making the top teams in school. I played on the JV team at school for all three years in middle school (6th grade, 7th grade, and 8th grade). After those three years of playing, I stopped between half way through the 9th grade year to try a new sport to expand my activities in sport. As I took a break from soccer, I went to volleyball and played for a year and a half. Volleyball never ended up to be a favorite of mine, I was loosing interest very quickly, so what I did was I started to play again coming into my junior year. Now as a junior, I have entered the varsity team and I am playing as right wing and left wing with the number 16 on my jersey.
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LO 1 Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
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SAAC (South American Activities Conference)
SAAC is a tournament/conference where American schools around South America compete in different sports and activities internationally for first place or to show student talent. SAAC has two categories, Sports and the Arts. For sports, there is Soccer, Swimming, Volleyball and Basketball SAAC. SAAC Arts is all in one, where students get to show their talent in Visual Arts, Drama, Band, and Choir. There is a total of six schools that participate in SAAC; Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Lima, Peru), Asociación Escuelas Lincoln (Buenos Aires, Argentina), International School Nido de Aguilas (Chile), International School of Curitiba (Curitiba, Brasil), Uruguayan American School (Montevideo, Uruguay), and Colegio Americano de Quito (Quito, Ecuador).
This year it was my first year participating in SAAC to represent my school Colegio Roosevelt as a team in soccer. This 2016 SAAC soccer was hosted by Asociación Escuelas Lincoln in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This was my second time coming to Lincoln after coming to the schools 2014 GIN conference. This being my first time being chosen to represent FDR and flying with my team has been a very fun and exciting experience, especially after working super hard to be able to be chosen for SAAC. The SAAC team is made up of 16 players from the Varsity team and of course, not everyone got chosen to go. During my middle school years, I would look up to the SAAC team and wish to be a part of it, and having the satisfaction of being picked to compete in this team made me feel super good about myself.
This years SAAC was very well planned out and the hosts team and school was very welcoming and well prepared to accommodate all the incoming teams. Flying with our Athletics Director, Mr. Christopher Mott, our two girl coaches, Erika and Olienka (a coach who had previously worked with the FCBarcelona club in Lima), and the boys' coaches. We were a total of 37 people that were representing the American School of Lima.
After all the sweat and hard work that the team had put in to every training and practice game, we arrived to Buenos Aires super confident and ready to play. Unfortunately, we did not finish at first place but we did make it to the finals, competing against Quito where the game finished 1-0. It was a tough journey throughout the three days of competition because we lost a few valuable players who were injured the first few games. Half way through the competition, we were losing hope because we had many people injured (including myself), but thanks to our team captain, Nicole Muñiz, she kept us on our feet, making us feel confident every game. We had won all games against every team except one (Quito), whom which we lost two times in the whole SAAC tournament.
Even though SAAC did not turn out how we wanted to, as the first time being a part of SAAC, I enjoyed it and had the best time ever. I got to meet new people, I got closer to my team, and I felt super proud going onto the field knowing that I had made it this far in soccer. This has been my first and my last SAAC ever and it is a trip/experience that I will never forget and will cherish these memories forever.
This years SAAC was very well planned out and the hosts team and school was very welcoming and well prepared to accommodate all the incoming teams. Flying with our Athletics Director, Mr. Christopher Mott, our two girl coaches, Erika and Olienka (a coach who had previously worked with the FCBarcelona club in Lima), and the boys' coaches. We were a total of 37 people that were representing the American School of Lima.
After all the sweat and hard work that the team had put in to every training and practice game, we arrived to Buenos Aires super confident and ready to play. Unfortunately, we did not finish at first place but we did make it to the finals, competing against Quito where the game finished 1-0. It was a tough journey throughout the three days of competition because we lost a few valuable players who were injured the first few games. Half way through the competition, we were losing hope because we had many people injured (including myself), but thanks to our team captain, Nicole Muñiz, she kept us on our feet, making us feel confident every game. We had won all games against every team except one (Quito), whom which we lost two times in the whole SAAC tournament.
Even though SAAC did not turn out how we wanted to, as the first time being a part of SAAC, I enjoyed it and had the best time ever. I got to meet new people, I got closer to my team, and I felt super proud going onto the field knowing that I had made it this far in soccer. This has been my first and my last SAAC ever and it is a trip/experience that I will never forget and will cherish these memories forever.