First goal

by Anton Zuiker on August 23, 2025

Recently, I joined a pick-up soccer game in Cary, my first time with this group for their Friday mid-day game. I arrived early so I could introduce myself to the players before they got started, so I chatted up the first guy, wanting to show that I was a friendly bloke. I asked him when he got started in the game, and he said he’d been playing since his youth, and I told him I first kicked a soccer ball in Idaho, when I was 11 or 12.

The game that day in Cary was fast, fun, and hot. I returned home, showered and dressed, and got back to work.

The next time I played, at the regular Wednesday night pick-up game in Chatham County, I took a ball to the face, my glasses smashed against the side of my head. I took myself off the field, cleared my head, drove home. In the mirror, I saw a bright bruise at my temple. Later, my ophthalmologist checked my right eye for damage, gave me an ‘all clear’ but suggested I take a break for a month. It’s going to be hard to stay off the pitch.

Today, while I was digging into the bins that hold the papers and books and mementoes of my life, I came across the photo at top, me with my first soccer team, in Caldwell, Idaho most likely in summer 1982. I’m in the top row, second from left, with the long blonde hair. I can still remember the first goal I scored in that uniform, a clumsy breakaway on a dusty field.

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