The Bravest in the Toughest Times

         First off, what is courage? Courage in my opinion is being confident in yourself to do something which you once feared without fearing the consequence.  Not a lot of people have courage or hope, there is always something holding them back from doing what they want to do. I know not a lot of people have the guts to really stand up for their values, it depends on the type of people they really are. There has to be something fearful in order for you to feel courage. There’s a time when I played a very anti-leaders soccer team, it didn’t work out well at the beginning, but at the end I found that through courage  and hope you can manage to push away what is stopping you from doing what you love.
 

I remember having a friend name Draven who I used to played on the same soccer team with, and on the team there were leaders, team captains, and also the coach’s son who basically ran the team. There were lousy leaders on the team. As a matter of fact, you might say that the captains on the team were anti-leaders. They personified everything a leader should not be. They were negative and always focused on the dark side of things.   Draven and I didn’t like that but we kept it to out selves. We figured out ithat n reality leaders on the team wouldn’t listen to us, even the coaches. In games they yelled and swore at teammates who committed mistakes or failed to pass them the ball. If another teammate was open in these games, they held onto the ball themselves instead of passing to the open man. In practice they set a wonderful example by consistently dogging it and looking for corners to cut. When and if they were benched in games, which was not often enough in my opinion, they’d complain that the coach was an idiot and didn’t know what he was doing. Furthermore they refused to take responsibility for their behavior, pointing the finger of blame at everyone else. All in all, they were selfish players.

  Draven and I weren’t very happy about the team leader’s crap. They dumped on us regularly and jumped all over us whenever we gave up the ball. I think Draven was a much more skilled player than many of the guys who called them selves “captains” he was also a class act, he was  more mature than most. When the captains made fun of a players in the changes room and tried to get everyone else to join in, Draven and I refused to play their nasty, immature games. We didn’t care if it meant not getting along with them. We, many times, did the courageous thing, standing up to them  in front of the whole team, telling them to grow up and stop acting like losers.  Unfortunately our responses only brought laughter.  To make matters worse, the coaches were totally oblivious to the team .They ignored the yelling and did nothing to protect the underclass of the team.  Apparently they didn’t seem to have a clue that building a winning team starts and ends with the coaches! Furthermore the coaches didn’t even seem to care. The coaches make it so unfair that captains were allowed to play regardless of how they practiced or how they acted during games.

 We decided that we were no longer going to let this situation get us down. We had chosen the most difficult road to travel for ourselves. This road somewhere between courage and standing up for our selves, When captains swore at us in games we didn’t let their immature behavior get us down. We responded by working harder in practice and being more positive to ourselves.  When other teammates were being put down Draven and I tepped in to support them and confront the offending captains when the coaches benched us after playing well while unfairly allowing their favorites to keep playing despite a sloppy game of soccer and selfish play.  We maintained our motivation and kept positive attitudes.

           Over all we decided to approached the coaches after practice one day. Draven and I expressed our concern that the coach was being unfair and rewarding the upperclassmen’s poor play and rotten attitudes. The talk didn’t necessarily get us much more playing time in the next game, but we figured that despite situations like that, we weren’t going to let that stop us from playing the game we love.

 - Koffi Nyavor