Playing Sports at TCA

I am not and have never been very athletic but while in school I tried. Since our school was so small I was on the varsity soccer team since the fourth grade. I started on the front line and every two years I’d move back a position. Finally, the last three years I played goalie. I excelled pretty well at this. There are a couple reasons for this. First, I didn’t have to run. I hated running, not very good at running. In fact, even in high school I could only do a 10 minute mile, if I was lucky. Second, we played other Christian schools smaller than us and so competition was average and most of us on the team had played together for five to eight years and so I didn’t have to do a lot of work in protecting the goal. 

I loved playing soccer. When I was in high school, our team was undefeated. My favorite games were when we played a couple of the soccer leagues in town. We didn’t win but I had a lot of practice trying to block shots. It was a lot of fun and I got to show that I was pretty good. During my senior year I received the MVP award for individual, league, and tournament. I still have those trophies.

I was not good at basketball but during my freshman and sophomore years I kept trying. I was told that if I came to practice I’d get to play and those who skipped practiced wouldn’t get to play. It didn’t work out that way. I came to every practice but ended up only playing a minute or two each game. I know I wasn’t very good and I finally realized that it just was not worth my time. I gave up my dream of a basketball scholarship and getting into the NBA.

We didn't play football or baseball for number of reasons but we did play softball. I usually played catcher and was an average batter. I had a golf swing that worked okay but I worked on trying to change that so that I didn't pop out as much. I was an average player but I enjoyed playing. In one of our games, I still remember a friend named Richard jumping over the catcher to get to home base and he used to squat down while at bat to make it harder for the pitcher.

I remember the bus trips to and from the games. One time we even had somebody moon us. We’d take trips all the way up to north Phoenix to play Heart to Heart. We’d play Mexican Gospel Mission (MGM) and one or two other smaller Christian schools. Half the fields we played on were not well-kept but anyone who lives in Az knows it’s not easy to have a green lawn with 100+ degree heat especially when soccer starts before summer ends. 

Coach Fulmer was the best coach. No matter the sport, he would run us ragged to get us ready to play. We'd hold really loud team pep rally's in a classroom. One time he told us that if we scored a certain number of goals he'd switch and put the defense on offense. We got to ten goals and begged him to switch. It was great to play a forward again, even if just for a few minutes. I believe I was able to score one. That was one of many great games. 

Playing sports at TCA was a great experience.