Sporting contests to remember: The little young men

Goaaaaaa! A synonym to football and sandy beaches, is the place where some people have had the experience of their lives. The moment you get into one of the most prestigious engineering colleges of the country, one can never imagine or even dream to have an action packed football journey of his life. Think about the National Institutes of Technologies (NITs) and the first word that comes to your mind is nerds, for few IIT rejects and what not.

Since my early days of playing in college, one observation was that the amount of talent that the college held was immense. The team had players from different states but had one passion among them, which held the team together. Apart from being individually brilliant, the team lacked basic team chemistry. Initially as I joined the team I realized the horror that the team isn’t the ‘tiki-taka’ type but in fact had succumbed to the route one of football: the dreaded long ball.

A year went by and the team had many voids in it. For people who have no idea, NIT teams are pretty senior oriented, as experience speaks more than raw skills, if that sounds diplomatically reasonable. This was the year in which for the first time ever, a home tournament was organized and was won by us in a very long ball-ish manner. The final year students decided to take part in Spree, an event organized by BITS-Goa. The seniors from our team still high in the deluded awe of the triumph did not show any interest or excitement as such to participate. One after another every final year student backed out with reasons like placements, projects and attendance. As high as six players from our starting eleven dropped out and that didn’t help the confidence in the team either. We left for a trip rather than a sporting venture. Lots of clothes packed, shades and some research on places to visit and I was good to go.

The day we reached Goa it felt like an exotic weekend and I could already smell the feeling of being on a beach and was informed by the organizers the next morning that we had the day off as our matches were scheduled for the next day. Few of the boys already made plans but my exact words to them were, “we have plenty of time to roam, I’d much rather sleep now and go out after we crash out of the tournament.” The next morning, the Zuari football ground was the first venue for the tournament; the lush green ground was the best I had ever played in.

Low on confidence with a whole new team, we had no idea how we would fetch. This game was memorable for me as I was allowed to play at my favourite position for the first time i.e. center midfielder. Minutes passed by the team was strictly ordered by our captain to play on the floor, as much as possible. We scored our first goal and I could see everyone gliding along the ball. I personally never felt like passing the ball to anyone; having played on a stone filled hard firm ground, this felt like paradise. We won that game 3-0 against the team from Indore and were eagerly ready to play our second and last league game against BITS Hyderabad. A must win for them to go through the league round as they had already lost to the Indore team a day back. They played with a high back line but that would miserably fail as our team was full of sprinters rather than physically strong players. They went down 4-0 and the first thing that came to my mind was, “I should’ve gone to the beach earlier with my friends!”

Free flowing midfield, strong willed defense and hardworking forwards. This form of football was never seen, played or experienced by our college. It was the quarter-finals against an engineering college from Kerala, which after a hard fought game ended 1-1. It was time for the dreaded penalties. Our college was jinxed as we have had never triumphed on penalties and this seemed nothing different. The captain missing his share of contribution the team looked dismayed but the tallest lad in the team came to the rescue and saved one and it was sudden death. With one of their players blasting one over the bar, it was left to one of our defenders to finish it off. Under confident, but lady luck was on his side and our curse was finally broken.

The very same night when we advanced to the semi-finals and we also had a basketball game against Don Bosco college of Goa. It was an intense game with the local team drubbing our college by a point, while their non-stop sledging nearly leading to a fight. We drew Don Bosco for the semi-finals later that night. Being a physical education college battering all the teams so far, it was obvious why the other three teams wanted to avoid them and.

Our in-form striker declared himself injured and decided not to start but was seen shooting hoops on the basketball court. Our team decided to start defensively and park the bus and drag them to penalties. We conceded a penalty and were one goal down as we went into the half way mark. That’s when we decided to all out for the win. Drained and drenched we tried everything but they were up for it. With about ten minutes left, I passed the ball horizontally linear to me to the guy whom I trusted the most in the team. He stood, he turned and he shot from 30 yards! To even try that on a turn at such a distance is a joke but he scored.

The opponents started attacking like a swarm of bees. Save after save, our keeper was in the form of his life. As we all were loaded in the box and I looked the captain in his eyes, he was about to take the goal kick and I start moving towards the left wing. He took the kick that landed accurately by my feet. I wondered if I should shield the ball and waste some time. But one of their players rushing towards me out of desperation. But that’s when I saw my team-mate making a run out of nowhere. I was in two minds, to pass or not. I decided to pass and he somehow dribbled past an onrushing defender and now it was a two on two situation. He slapped the ball at the far post and it was a simple tap in and we caused a major upset.

When the whistle finally blew, I knew that we are going to be the champions. Later that evening it was the finals against another local Goan physical education college, PCCE. Our team went riot as we thrashed four goals past them.

The only regret of my venture was that I ended up sleeping when I had the chance to visit the beaches and build some sand castles. But the victory overpowered the regret without any shadow of a doubt. The character shown by some amateur group of boys who never in their dreams had thought of winning the tournament was phenomenal. This was the journey of young little boys maturing into big men.