Soccer team sets goals for improvement

By Toshiyuki Mita

My high school soccer ended at the moment the referee blew the whistle at the end of a game two years ago. In that game the opposing team was a very strong team from a Korean high school in Aichi Japan. It was the first qualifying round of the prefecture tournament. The result was a complete defeat of 0-2. It was very mortifying.

Toshiyuki Mita (far left, front row), the author of this article, is pictured here with his high school soccer team. Click on photo for larger version. (Photo courtesy Toshiyuki Mita)

But our team accepted the challenge. Although our team had been very weak for the previous six months, we participated in the prefectural tournament.

We held many meetings. At the meetings, we chose to take soccer more seriously. Our goals were to enter the prefectural tournament and to make the second round.

We ran 10 kilometers every day. So it was a hell of a practice. What feeling did we have from soccer practice? We had only the memory of running in our head.

We had confirmed our goals before practice every day. And we wrote the goals on paper many times.

We are very satisfied though we were able to accomplish only one of two goals -- making it to the first round.