My Interest in Sports

My Interest in Sports 

                                                              -Jordi Yebouet

     I started playing sports from a very young age. Sports somehow defined my identity as a child, and does so up until this day. Sports is something I can not live without. 

There is something about watching and playing sports that thrills me. 

Every minute of every day of my childhood I spent thinking about the practices or big match ups coming up, for the team I was in season for. I wouldn’t say playing football was my life passion, but playing football was defiantly an immense passion of mine and nothing could interrupt me from this.  

Every day of my life from 14 to 18 I played football. We had a very sportive community of students in Dubai who always played sports, so that was also a determining factor.

Although I often played, the day that stood out to me is the day we played Everton a professional football teams academy in the United States.  It was the day my team played a top competitor. We had a fair chance at beating this team. Preparing for the game I stood weak in the knees, my heart was racing, and I was breathing hard. I couldn’t figure out why I was so nervous, maybe it was anxiousness, or maybe it was suspense, better yet a combination of all three. I had played many basketball teams, against even harder teams then this, why did this game seem different?

I went into the game confident, yet still nervous. Warm-ups didn’t exactly ease my emotions, perhaps they just made me more up tight. Standing in our team huddle my coach told us to remain calm, and to just leave it all out on the pitch. He told the team the starting line-up, and it came as no shock to me I was going to start, At this point I think all of the emotion I was feeling suddenly left my body, sort of making my body numb, or perhaps it intensified the emotion by a lot. I thought to myself “This is it Jordi, this is what you have been practicing and working for.” I started the game strongly and ended up getting a red card after a great performance, mainly because I was too hyped and didn’t manage my emotions properly.