Reflective Essay Example: Benefits of Playing Soccer as a Child

Enrolling is soccer as a youth and the long term benefits it provides on the child's interactions and health. 

Soccer is a popular sport that is enjoyed by millions of people all around the world. This is not simply a sport, but also an activity that anybody can participate in and learn vital life lessons from. Playing soccer over the course of my lifetime taught me valuable lessons on collaboration, dedication and friendship as well as sharpen my leadership skills to hone me into a leader, insead of a follower.

Starting off, playing soccer ensures great health both physically and mentally. This is due to the way the sport is designed where pace and agility play a massive role on overall performance which forces both of these things to be trained heavily. While playing soccer throughout my life, every single one of my coaches began each 2 and a half hour practices with suicides which are an intense running drill which focuses on training agility. The couches would then focus on conditioning which is great for overall health. In these conditioning drills the team would be running for a long period of time at a low-medium level intensity which is great for burning fat and overall increasing lower body strength. In soccer the more hours spent on footwork and physical conditioning, the better you become. Soccer can be extremely physical, but is also a mental game. It is important to be in the right mental state during a game because distractions in the head lead to mistakes on the field. The intense training the player goes through at practices helps build the strong mind required for the sport which can also be applied to other aspects of life. Soccer forces the players to multitask because when a player has the ball, they need to continue to move, look for open teammates on the field, and maneuver around the opposing team simultaneously. This leads to making the players more aware of their surroundings leading to a sharper, more alert mind. Overall soccer is great for maintaining both a healthy body and a healthy mind leading to an overall happier life.

Soccer is a team sport where a player is only as good as his team and a team is only as good as its players. Every player's individual ability affects the team as a whole which motivates each and every player to become the best version of themselves. Playing on a team helps the players develop strong relationships as well as learning to push through hardships as a team. Playing on a soccer team helped me develop my teamwork and leadership skills at an early age which I applied to other aspects of my life such as school. As a group each person had a role that would only be beneficial when playing as a team. An example of this would be a forward, the forwards are of no use if the defenders and midfielders can't push the ball from their respective halves and the whole team can't win without teamwork and effective playmaking. These teamwork and leadership skills carried over to school in the sense that learning how to work with a team at a young age. In my grade 11 physics class, the majority of my class struggled when it came to completing assignments, but me, who had a strong connection with one of my former teammates, collaborated and finished the assessments with ease. Playing soccer teaches players that it's ok to make mistakes and it's a natural part of the learning process because the way soccer training happens is that if one player makes a mistake the whole team has to suffer. This could be in the form of the whole team having to run a lap around the field to intense conditioning such as push ups or suicides. This forces each player to give it their all while also teaching the players that it's ok to make mistakes and to understand that their teammates will make mistakes and that's just part of learning and improving. Soccer teaches you collaboration which is one of the most important traits of a successful person in the real world.

To finish off, it must be said that playing soccer as a child leads to a more intelligent student in the classroom. This is primarily due to the speed the sport is played at forcing players to forge their minds to adapt to different scenarios. Soccer is a sport where decisions need to be made instantly without hesitation and decisions that will outsmart the opponents. Due to these conditions it develops one's critical thinking and overall awareness. This single aspect helped me massively in school, especially in STEM related situations as it taught me to be aware of every possible scenario and also helped me critically understand and make decisions based on the situation and solution. Soccer also helps develop one's mind to think out of the box, this is because as a team you are faced against opponents that also have a plan leading to the game being heavily based on what team has the better plan both on defense and offense as well as what team can adapt their plan to counter the opposing teams strategies. This forces the players to develop new strategies and tactics on the spot based on the scenario to create a play. This puts the child's mind through realistic problem solving scenarios that would actually prepare them for the real world. 

Playing Soccer is not only beneficial but is also some of the most fun I've had growing up which has little to no downsides. Thus, for the following reasons that soccer helps the children both mentally and physically, tones great leadership and collaboration skills as well as leading to forming a more intelligent student, soccer is a great activity to enroll today's youth in.