Pushed

Moniek van Rheenen — Pushed

Monique from New York. No one’s interested in my PhD. But my first love was soccer. I did not really have a chance to love anything else because my dad came to the US from the Netherlands to play soccer. And so it was in my blood. And I was really excited when I made varsity my freshman year in high school. I worked my ass off because I wasn’t the biggest, I wasn’t the strongest, but I was the fastest and I had a killer left foot.

And so I was really excited. First couple games, I got off the bench, I got onto the field and I played and started a couple games when we played some of the weaker teams and had a really solid start. So my sophomore year, my goal was that I was going to be starting on that field every single game.

I did all the summer workouts, went through the tryouts, breezed through it, and we get into the season. I was fast. I had good foot skills. I was by far the smallest girl on the field, and so I wasn’t quite the toughest. And oftentimes, if it was a bigger girl that was marked up against me, she could push past, and I’d lose the ball.

My coach was kind of tough, and she didn’t like that I was getting knocked around. And so she told me, Mo, you’ve got to get mean. You’ve got to knock them around back. And I thought, I don’t know how to do this when girls are twice my size, but sure, OK. And she threatened me. She said, I’ll bench you if you don’t foul a girl in the first five minutes. I’m pulling you out. I’m someone who would go in for, sure, I’ve thrown a couple elbows. Who hasn’t? You pull a shirt every once in a while. You slide a little late. But I wasn’t going in there to go take other people out. That wasn’t really how I played. And some of the other girls were just kind of scary. Usually, I was afraid that if I hit someone, they’d hit harder.

But I got nervous because my coach was true to her word, that if I didn’t hit someone and get a whistle, I saw my sub on the center line and I thought, well shit, now I have to sit the rest of the game. And the thing I hated most was sitting. And so I tried really hard. I would sit there anxious if I didn’t get a chance to throw like a subtle foul in the first five minutes. And I’d see my sub start warming up, so I’d just go over and shove a girl. Because I wanted to stay in.

And my nickname went from Mo to Mellow Yellow because I got a lot of yellow cards doing that. And it got to the point where my dad pulled me aside, and he was never my coach, but he had such a love and eye for the game, and he said, what the fuck are you doing? I said, dad, I just want to play. That’s all I want to do. And if I got to foul a girl, I’m staying on the field. Well, it got to the point where that wasn’t enough, and I got benched anyway. And I was really frustrated. So I was especially excited when word came out that our coach was transferring to another school because she thought our team, quote, wasn’t going anywhere. Caused a lot of drama, so it was especially exciting when we made it to the semi-finals of the state tournament and we were playing her team.

It was a really scrappy game because she taught all of her girls to play mean. They’re sitting there, they’re kicking at shins, they’re pulling shirts, there are girls that are getting kicked out of the game left and right, and from my team too because we’d also been trained to be mean.

And so it’s down to the final moments of the game, we got probably 15 minutes left, and it’s tight. It’s tied. Tensions are high. Nerves are high. And I get the ball. And I know that this girl that is at least twice my size and has been knocking me around all game, that if I get one touch past her, I’m gone. And so I get the ball, do a little fancy footwork, and I lose her. And I’m booking it down the field. I’m cutting in towards center. I know I can go for a goal. I’m bypassing the forward who’s calling for the ball because this is my moment. and I get taken out from behind by this damn girl who’s chasing me, right in the middle of the penalty box.

I don’t like penalty kicks, because that’s a lot of pressure. And it’s a lot of pressure when it’s down to the wire in the semifinal game, and it’s that bitch of a coach who’s been benching you all season.

So I go up there. My heart’s beating a mile a minute. I set the ball down on the marker. And I’m watching the keeper, and she’s jumping around on the line. I can hear people yelling. I see my dad in the bleachers, and I know that if I miss a penalty kick, it’s going to be bad at home.

It’s going to be bad with my team, too. But I go up there, and I see that coach, and I see that damn smirk on her face. And I can think of her just telling me, you’re not mean. You’re not mean enough. You’re not mean enough to play. And I took that ball. I ran back, and I buried that ball so far into that corner of that goal. Woo!

We lost the game because they got the ball back and they scored. So that was disappointing. But afterwards, it didn’t matter to me because that ball was in the back of that net.

And because I was sportsmanlike and I wasn’t mean, we went up and we shook hands with everyone afterwards. And I went up to that coach and I shook her hand. And she goes, Mo, that was an okay game. And after that, We did go on to win the state championship the next year, so that was good. But I never played mean, but I always played to win. Thanks.