High School Soccer Tryouts

Although it's been months since this whole thing occurred, writing this post is still incredibly hard. So much hurt, so much anger, so much disappointment still for my Savannah. Since the spring, Savannah and I had discussed what might possibly happen regarding the high school soccer team. In the fall there would be nine seniors, quite a lot of juniors, and a few sophomores who had either played as freshmen or been pulled up at the end of the previous season leaving only 2 or 3 spots on Varsity. I figured Coach Rankin wouldn't cut any of the seniors although there would be some on the team that, let's face it, were pretty gosh darn awful. In my mind, he kept all the players that ended up on Varsity last year, move up one or two of the juniors and sophomores, and keep the rest on JV. We were definitely hoping Savannah would be one of those to make Varsity but she said she would be okay on JV because we assumed some of her Celtic teammates would end up there with her. She worked extremely hard at tryouts and seemed to be doing well but at the end of tryouts she, along with 5 other girls including 3 Celtic teammates, were placed in a bubble. These girls were ones Coach Rankin could not decide on so they would need to prove themselves on Soccer Play Day.

The Celtic Rams!

Play Day came and within the first game we got a bad feeling. He was playing three of the bubble girls a lot and the rest, including Savannah, weren't getting much playing time. She played plenty for JV and got a few minutes here and there when she played for Varsity but things weren't looking good for her.
Some shots from the JV game against Aberdeen.

A few minutes playing on Varsity against North Harford.

One on one against her old teammate, Cassidy, from Northern Elite.

More playing time for JV against North Harford's JV team.

The next week at practice the coach didn't even have the decency to tell her to her face that she hadn't made Varsity. Practice started, all her Celtic Rams teammates were pulled over to practice with Varsity, and she was left with the JV team. She was absolutely heartbroken and embarrassed and left doubting her abilities as a soccer player. This hit on her confidence has remained with her to this day, 7 months later. We both agreed that if one or two of her Celtic teammates had been with her on JV it would have been okay but not a single player was left with her. Even both freshmen were pulled up to Varsity. JV was left with 14 players and Varsity was stacked to the limit with 20. There were a lot of tears, a lot of anger on mine and David's part, and we even told her that it would be fine if she didn't want to play. But I'm so proud of this daughter of mine. Yes, she was devastated but she picked herself up, went to practice, practiced hard, played hard, and stuck it out. The season was not an easy one but she survived it and came out having developed qualities in herself that she wouldn't have if she had made Varsity.