"I don't want to play Soccer dad"

I am pretty convinced that when I was born my father was a bit disappointed to discover that I was a girl. My father has been playing soccer for most of his life, and even now at fifty-two he continues to play soccer competitively on various teams. I'm very proud of him, but soccer has been somewhat of a shadow in my life because I refused to be part of this tradition with him. It was not because I was a girl and I found soccer masculine, but because I preferred more Romantic sports. What I mean by that, are sports like archery, fencing, horseback riding, martial arts, anything that had a heroic sort of element to it, that was what I wanted to do. Soccer to me was too mundane and everyday, it did not inspire my imagination and therefore I could not partake in it with as much fervor as my dad did. My interest in these type of activities came from all the fairy tales and heroic stories of knights that I read. 

I had a favorite book, which to this day I still possess, it was already quite old when I got to it, and some of the pages were only loosely hanging onto the binding, but I loved the stories in my fairy tale book. This book was not a book put out by Disney, or by any big author, and it had many fairy tales that had not been made into big movies and it was part of the reason I enjoyed it so much. My favorite stories were always the ones that involved a young boy going off into the woods only to emerge from them a brave young man. In these stories the boys always had to use their cunning to fight off giants, find the way back home, or find treasure, and on the way they had to learn all sorts of handy skills. Many of these young men were hunters and knew
how to use a bow and arrow, and the idea of hunting in the woods fascinated me. However, what always got my attention, especially after seeing movies like El Zorro, or Hook, was sword fighting.  Wielding a sword to me when I was six years old was the coolest thing  I had ever seen, and all I knew was that I wanted to do that too. I still remember having a wide assortment of plastic swords at my disposal when I was a child, and begging my dad to play with me because none of the kids that were my friends were interested in those sorts of games. As I got older my dreams of becoming a swordsman vanished and were put at the back of mind to be taken over by other interests, but I never forgot how much I loved to watch, and read about heroic young men who took on the world with nothing but their horse and their sword. It was not until I was in high school when I was given the opportunity to learn how to fight with swords.


My biology teacher happened to be a fencer in college and when he started out at our school he began a small fencing club. By the time that I had joined, my sophomore year of high school, he had had the club for about 5 or 6 years, with various fencers going on to compete in college. I dedicated all of my free time into the sport and competed in all and every event that I could. I submerged myself in the sport completely. Finally when I was at the end of my junior year in high school my teacher told me he had exhausted all he could teach me and that I had to seek out someone more experienced if I meant to do fencing competitively for years to come. Fencing had taken over my life, to the point where my entire social circle changed,

That's me on the right!! Fencing off with someone from UC Irvine.

and long friendships were broken and replaced. Not many people could understand my fascination with fencing, or why I spent so much time practicing and competing. I then joined one of the biggest clubs in Southern California, Los Angeles International Fencing Center, and was coached by top level fencers, which helped me a lot to sharpen the skills I had learned in that hallway at school where fencing practices were held. I became the captain of my team in high school, and by the end of my last year I was able to take my team to first place in the high school league which had not happened in a very long time. To this day my old coach reminds me that it was the best year he ever had in the club. Now that I am older I don't compete as much because it has become difficult for me to manage the pressure of competition, but I continue to love fencing, and I love to practice and teach people how to fence. I help out and coach at UCLA, where I also fenced on the team for four years, and I enjoy teaching new comers because I want to try and make them feel the same excitement I feel when I think about fencing. Despite the fact that I did not play soccer, my dad has forgiven me, and shares my enthusiasm for fencing. He loves to watch me fence, and cheers me on at every competition. I think even though he might've been disappointed in the beginning that I did not play soccer with him, he is very proud of me and all that I've achieved in my sport. He eggs me on everyday to practice and to keep learning all I can so I can fulfill my childhood dream of becoming a sword master.