Tag: Football Players

My Fifa team

junglebeats679Leave a comment

Throughout these last few weeks, I’ve been building a team of elite soccer players in a game called Fifa. How it works is you play games against other players with your team and as you win you complete challenges and win coins and packs. Packs hide players within them, and there are different ranks for players. For example, a really good player would be ranked gold, which is the best, followed that silver, and then the worst is bronze. This game translates to real life as well and tracks players’ stats if they are doing well throughout the season their rating will go up, however, if their skill has dropped then so will their rating on Fifa. A few of my favorite players that I have been seeking for a while are Brazilian legends such as Neymar, and Roberto Carlos. However, there has been a youngster taking the scene by storm, a young Ukrainian by the name of Mykhailo Mudryk who recently got signed by one of the most prestigious soccer clubs in the world Chelsea. I’ve been seeking his 90-rated card for a very long time.

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Photo Credit, Fifa Companion App

State Sanctioned Violence

icaruswithwarmwingsLeave a comment

All day like, seventeen-year-old lungs rip against heaving chests, drained of oxygen instead filled with battery acid.

All night like, polyester raging against its seams, raging against boys, struggling against muscles, pads, and hearts all swollen, all wet with sweat.

With my boys like, helmets too tight to contain caffeine, concussions, and memories.

With my pads like, misshapen boys ill suited for football competing not only against another team but with themselves.

We hit the field like, a week of repeated beat downs a month of lows and season of confused agony.

Dropping bodies like, a body careens toward another without hesitation, without fear or knowledge of how it will collide with the other.

All day, he swells proud of his grit.

All night, he overflows with passion.

With my boys, he demands I follow.

All day, like a young stallion on a single stake.

With my boys, like the veins on his flank, roaring, like the muscles in his hock, screaming: raw power unfathomable in its adolescent intensity.

All day, he drives his head into his helmet and charges back onto the field.

Photo credit: SB Nation

Equestrianism is Not a Sport… Say Football Players

Daphne Psaledakis1 Comment

One of the debates currently coursing through the student body at OVS is between football players and equestrians. The football players seem to think that horse-back riding is not a sport.

First of all, I’d like to invite football players to a sit-up competition. The equestrians would win.

Everyone who has sat on a horse even once can recognize the talent, skill, and hard work it takes for a 97 pound person (me) to maneuver a 1,500 pound animal to move forward, sideways, backwards, to jump and gallop and stop, all without looking like you’re doing anything. Not to mention the 1,500 pound horse has a mind of its own, a mind which most often, relishes in doing the exact opposite of what you want him to.

Horse-back riding isn’t a sport? Yeah right.

Whenever I can bully my dad into giving me a piggy back ride, which has been less and less often as I’ve grown taller, he has to remind me over and over again not to squeeze his sides with my legs. That would be because after thirteen years of gripping the sides of a horse, my legs are pretty strong.

Last spring, I decided to take a break from riding. For some reason, I decided to do cross-country running as my fall sport. First of all, that was a terrible idea. Secondly, I realized that I’ve gotten off a horse sweatier than I’ve been after a four or five mile run in ninety degree weather.  My muscles have been far sorer after a challenging ride than they have been after a long run.

Horse-back riding makes you use muscles you didn’t even know you had. It makes you focus, and plan out every move of each finger, arm, leg, and foot because the tiniest movement from any part of your body could send your horse off running or bucking. The horse can sense your fear. It can sense which way you look. It knows what you’re going to do almost before you do – and it loves to do just the opposite of what you’re asking.

So to the football players who think horse-back riding isn’t a sport (cough cough my editor in chief cough cough), I invite you to come to the barn and ride for sports one day. Forewarning, you’ll have a hard time moving the next day.

Time Jump

Defeated Again

callmemaybe32Leave a comment

Once I again I walked off of another teams field not feeling the great feeling of victory

This past weekend the team traveled up to Los Olivos, CA to compete against the Dunn Earwigs on their parents weekend, just as we did last year.

We went into the game with high hopes, and a new play series that we had worked on all week.

We arrived at the school, and right of the bat the day was not going as planned.

Somehow the ball bag was left back at school, some 2 hours away.

We did not have our own game balls, or our own kicking tee.

We put that aside and made do, and went into our pre game routine of bananas, pretzels, and stretching.

Our Defensive Coordinator John Wickenhaeuser had dome some research that bananas and pretzels before a game does the body good if that comment seemed a little odd.

During our warm ups that same nauseous feeling returned, and I was once again off my game.

I even tried to take medicine to make this feeling go away, but it is clear that it is nerves, and I just need to be hit a few times so that I don’t think about it as much.

When the game started Dunn quickly scored their first touchdown, and we weren’t too worried, that happens in the game of football.

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