New Kind of American - Started with "WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH IT"

I had to be 12 or 13 at the time, 1973-74 time frame. Fresh new Gringo having no place on the soccer field in Costa Rica. I was always a good athlete; baseball, basketball, football. I came from a place, north of Pittsburgh, Pa. where hard work and sports were pretty much the blue collar mentality and what kept everyone sane in our world. As you got older it normally became, hard work, drinking and sports. Being raised by my mom along with four brothers and sisters, since our dad past away, my smart mom was looking for a way out of there. She had returned to school to get her nursing degree which she achieved. She also managed to meet Pedro, who was studying Chemistry and would soon be returning to teach at the University in San Jose. Cut to the chase, it wasn't long before I was attending 7th grade at Country Day High School. The basketball court was a garden courtyard, but worked, no baseball and football was an occasional gathering of competition between our school and the one other private Gringo school, The Costa Rica Academy. But what did happen daily at lunch was a pick up game of soccer in the street. Of course me being the competitive person I was I had to jump right in. It was for the most part chaos in the street with two modified goals at each end. Enough for me to work up a sweet before having to be back in class. More and more I began to look forward to these lunch breaks. I remember the one scary thing was the zoo that was just over the hill on the other side of the fence along the road, and we could always hear the lions roaring when they were hungry. We were very careful to try to not boot the ball over the fence, because no one really wanted to volunteer to climb over to get the ball. It didn't matter because someone always had an extra ball. It wasn't to much longer before I learned that some of the older guys and better players had a game planned for that Saturday near the national stadium and dozens of soccer fields that surrounded the stadium. I guess they needed players because some how I ended up there and on the field, and I was having a great time, until. The ball ended up coming my direction right about the half way line and when I ended up next to the ball, I was also next to the oldest most experienced player on our team. I was so proud of myself that I was really going to contribute, so I yelled out, "I got it" and I booted that ball as hard as I could and it probably ended up in the keepers arms for easy distribution. I will never forget the immediate response from our team leader and I am not sure he put it so nicely, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH IT". I will never forget that and it is probably the point that I became a student of the game realizing there is a lot more to this sport. I've been a fanatic ever since. That is how, one American became a player, fan, coach and enthusiast of the most exciting sport in the world and why the next six weeks will be focused on the biggest sporting event in the world; 2010 World Cup in South Africa.