Lilly

They are better than us technically, playing from foot to foot with an ease that we can’t match, not yet; and they tell us that we can’t do it. With 20 minutes left we concede the first goal of the game and for a single, gutting moment immediately thereafter, we believe them.

But we rally. It isn’t our first time trying to come back from a deficit. Things start clicking; we don’t have the finesse that they do but our strength is in our fluidity, in trying new approaches, working as a single unit. We press them harder, earn a corner kick. I’m a defensive player, meant to hang back, but as my teammate starts towards the ball I sprint forward, making a diagonal run across the face of our opponents’ goal. Their captain screeches my number—17—a defender turns her head and loses sight of one of our forwards for a split second—the ball soars in and that forward meets it in midair, hammering it into the back of the net. Into the back of the net!

Everyone is screaming. I run at my teammate with arms outstretched and she leaps at me, arms around my neck and legs around my waist. We’re both laughing as I spin her, the crowd is in uproar, our coach is shouting for us to, “Get back, let’s go, let’s get another!” from the sideline. And we have the momentum, so we do. And a third. When the final whistle blows we’ve made history again, beating this team for the first time since our school’s program began.

My mother is giddy. “The other team’s parents, Lilly, you should have seen their faces,” she says later. “They thought you’d be an easy win. They were gloating the whole time. But those first two goals, those shut them up.”

And the third was just the nail in the coffin, I think. But what matters is that we won. ♦