Working On A Dream

9-24-2011

It's 8:12 pm on Saturday night. I got home from practice in Seoul a few hours ago. For dinner I re-toasted the other half of a flatbread tuna sandwich that also accompanied 1 1/2 cookies that I ordered from Subway earlier in the day. I will end the night studying my defensive playbook and eventually fall asleep watching Any Given Sunday. Compared to most other foreigners in Korea, this will be a relatively quiet night, but I need my rest. Tomorrow is a big day. Tomorrow I play football.

My team is the Seoul Warriors, and we play in the Korean American Football Association (KAFA). We are mostly Americans and Canadians, but the other teams in the league are primarily Korean. Although soccer and baseball are the two major sports in Korea, the KAFA is slowly growing to include 6 club teams, as well as 36 university teams. The Warriors were formed in 2010, and though it's our sport that we've been playing our whole lives, we didn't win the championship that first year. Having joined the following off-season in February, it was a pleasant surprise to me to find out that the Korean teams didn't roll over. They can actually play. So we've been preparing since March to get that title, and hopefully all the hard work will pay off starting tomorrow.

Most folks don't even know that American football exists in Korea, but we're trying to change that. Through word of mouth, fund raisers and public events, we've been slowly building our expat fan base. It's fun to win, but it's even better when you have folks cheering you on! Since our club consists mostly of English teachers and US soldiers, we have two big networks of people in Korea draw from. Tomorrow we expect to have several hundred friends and family members in the stands, including some colonels and generals. As the season progresses, we hope that number will grow.

As for the caliber of players on our team, many of the guys have played college and semi-pro ball, not to mention all the soldiers who are also in tremendous shape. That left a normal guy like me a little intimidated at first. I've put in a lot of work to get stronger, faster and quicker, but in the end you either know how to play football or you don't. My natural positions are Wide Receiver and Defensive Back/Safety. I am focusing primarily on the defensive side of the ball this season, and if practice is any indication, I'm expecting to see time at DB and S, but I may even play some Outside Linebacker on passing downs. We have a lot of skilled players on both sides of the ball, so we will be rotating in and out regularly to keep everyone fresh. For me, it doesn't matter what I play, as long as I'm on the field.

So my dream begins tomorrow. After highschool I thought it was finished. No hitting or breaking tackles. Just pulling flags and two-hand touch. It's a privilege that I took for granted when I was young, and I won't make that mistake again. I am so excited right now that I'm probably not going to be able to sleep tonight. Tomorrow I play football again.