Diary of a Striker with Bethany Balcer: The Joy of the Sport

Diary of a Striker is a Girls Soccer Network exclusive series from Bethany Balcer of OL Reign. Balcer will be giving readers an inside look at her journey as a professional player all season long. New posts drop every two weeks!

Soccer is a grind. It’s lots of fitness, weightlifting, sprints, pushups. You name it. As athletes, we work so hard to get better and have success, as an individual and a team. It’s easy to get lost in all of it. When you aren’t at the professional level doing it for work, sometimes it can feel like a job and a burden, but where’s the joy in that? Sports shouldn’t be weighing you down like that. It should be a release and a place where you feel safe and free. That’s why I think it’s important to talk about ways to keep it entertaining and fun.

Some of my best memories from college soccer weren’t made on the field. They were made in the locker room before the game started having dance-offs with my teammates. It was having my teammates scare me any time I walked around a corner. It was the long bus rides, getting no sleep, eating loads of ice cream. Those are the moments that stick with me, they define my experience more than the scoreline, or our record ever did.

I hope you can recall the last time you lost your breath from laughing so hard with your team. Or maybe you tripped over your own feet at training, and you lit up your teammate’s face (I’m guilty of this 🙂 ). Whatever it may be, I hope you can look back on your athletic career thus far and see what soccer has given back to you. Friendships. Memories. Trophies. Road trips. It truly is a gift that keeps on giving. And it would bring me so much joy to see the fun be more prevalent in soccer nowadays. Sure, we’re all there to win and be the best, but when that’s the only aim, it can take the fun and joy out of it. It’s important to let loose and not take yourself too seriously at times. So, go make that Tik Tok with your teammate, go and practice goal celebrations, have a team movie night, and remember that you won’t be a soccer player your whole life…so make it worth it!

Photo by Damien LG

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