Bully in Sport

I played soccer for many years of my childhood. Up until high school I always played with my friends and had a great time. For the two years that I played in high school I had to go to Muscatine because my school could not field a team. My freshman year was fun. There were five other girls from my school that wen with me, I only played JV, and I was able to make a lot of new friends. Then my sophomore season came around and it was much different. All of my friends from my school decided to quit, so I had to drive down there by myself everyday. My coaches also thought I was talented enough to be a part of the varsity team, but I still mainly play JV. Now I had to practice with the varsity team everyday and felt very lonely. The girls my age were the most rude to me, mainly because they saw me as a threat. No one would include me in their conversations or wanted me to be in their group or team at practice. They also never included me in any outside activities, like team dinners or bonding. The way they treat me made me dread going to practice everyday and made me cry many times driving to and from practices or late at night after away games. 

I was starting to get more varsity playing time by the end of the year, which made me feel even more disliked by the girls. By the time regionals came around the softball season had started and I had to choose between which sport I wanted to play every night. By that point I was done with soccer and how I was being treated by the girls their that I decided to quit before the season was even over. This probably made me even more disliked by those girls, but I really did not care at that point. I was more loved and appreciated playing softball at my own school. It quickly turned into my favorite sport after that because it was so much more fun than my soccer team. So, I decided not to play soccer the next year because I did not want to feel left out and disliked anymore.

Those girls had more power over me because they had started playing varsity soccer their freshman year so they thought they were better than me and one girl’s dad was the head coach. They felt like they were invincible because of the coach and I was a threat to them after I was getting more playing time. I feel like they may have been mean to me on purpose to try to get rid of me. They had also been playing club soccer together from a young age, with the girl’s dad as their coach, so that made me an even bigger outsider. After I left t did start a movement of other girls my age leaving for relatively the same reasons.