Despite what you may think...

As every Hollywood sports flick has taught us, a scrappy underdog can come out of nowhere and knock off the defending champ. What Hollywood often neglects to point out is that for every scrappy underdog who comes from behind to win it all, there are ten other scrappy underdogs who manage to stay behind and lose on a routine basis. I'm beginning to think that our soccer team might be like that. Oh, don't get me wrong. We're scrappy. We get injured and battered and (sorely) beaten, but we keep coming back for more. Yeah, it's entirely possible that we will lose every single game this season, but you know what? I'm fine with that. I don't want an inspirational coach to come in and turn our acts around. I don't want a new player to show up and magically inspire us with his courage. Why, you might ask? Because, quite frankly, I'm having a good time with this, I'm getting good exercise, and I don't have to take everything seriously. Does this make me a loser? In some books, perhaps, but those weren't the books that really spoke to me anyway, so why should I care? At the end of the day, I would rather be able to look at myself in the mirror and say, "hey, you know what? I'm on my way to becoming the kind of person I want to be." So yes, we got thrashed, but we'll be back next week, and we'll probably get another good thrashing then, but you know what? We'll have had a good time, so I will count myself a winner.