Reflective Essay: Overcoming Adversity

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Roman lyric poet Horace once said, “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.” In other words, working to overcome difficulties will bring out the best talents within a person opposed to if they did not work for an outcome and was simply handed the results. The most important aspect of this quote is “adversity”. I believe this quote reveals nothing but the truth for I have faced minor cases of adversity and still discovered traits within myself, especially throughout my soccer career when I sprained my ankle and when my coach left my team.

During my first year of middle school my entire soccer club was sent to a camp to play on bigger fields and verse older girls reaching up …show more content…

It was not only painful to recover but it was also hard to watch as the other girls around me were improving their skills on the field, while I could barely walk. When I could finally rejoin the team I struggled to keep up with my teammates and had nearly lost all confidence in myself. Though, the same season I came back our team was giving a new leader, Coach Rod. Coach Rod was my inspiration to never give up. He provided me with extra workouts I could do on my own time to bring back my level of play and even invited me to practice additionally with his college team. Soon enough I regained my strength and developed my skills as to where even his college players were telling me I could match the intensity of one of their games. Coach Rod was and still is the best coach I had ever had. He taught our team how to connect and become a family on and off the field. Together we won almost every game we played. Although, one day before one of our practices we were informed the club had asked Rod to leave because they prefered encouraging individual improvement only and did not agree with his style of team coaching. That day the team fell apart. The new coach was a mean woman and obviously had no sympathy for the loss of our coach as she immediately enforced entirely different drills that same practice. No one wanted to carry on the season without Rod and slowly our winning record disappeared as less people began showing

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