The big Competition
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Football is a very lovely sport and I have always enjoyed playing it. I am a Nigerian and it's no news that Nigeria is a football-loving nation, so I believe that my keen interest in football is not out of the ordinary. I started playing football at a very young age which made me develop more interest in the game. I played football from my primary school days up until my secondary school days and now in the university where I am currently studying.
I joined the university football team as soon as I was offered admission by the university, and since then I have been growing from strength to strength. I met two of my teammates on the first day I went for the team screening, @noskiart, and @whitestallion, they were really intimidated by the whole process but I was there to calm them down.
We passed the screening exercise and were accepted into the school team. Since then we have always been hardworking for the team and our manager. We have so far played with the team for two years and probably as a result of my hard work the coach decided to make me the captain of the team or " Skipper", as we prefer to call it.
My team and I have been so great and it really paid off, we qualified for the Nigerian university games and we were determined to prove ourselves at the national level. I was the youngest person to captain a team in the history of the tournament at the age of 18. Although I was the youngest member of the team, I was still the captain and that was the most important thing. I am a very resilient person and giving up on any cause is never an option for me and my team.
We didn't go into the competition as favorites but we were determined to win. My team progressed from the group stage to the knock-out stage and we were very happy. After that, we continued fighting although it didn't look like a fight we could win; we barely survived through the group stage. Regardless we still continued fighting, we were not intimidated by any team at the tournament. The tournament continued, the momentum increased, the hunger increased. We made it through the first knock-out round and into the quarter-finals. We were relentless in our fight, we continued, and we scaled through that stage as well. We got into the semifinals strong and in good shape. Everything was going fine, we were winning. Towards the end of the match, I got injured and couldn't continue to play.
My manager thought it wasn't too serious until the morning of the final match, my legs were swollen and I couldn't walk. That was a big blow to the team, losing a captain and a strong defender at the same time. My team didn't believe they could do it, but I encouraged them. I told them that one person does not make a team, what mattered was the team spirit. I gave them serious words of encouragement and stood by the sidelines to watch them play the final match, the most important match. My teammates tried their best but the pressure from the opposition was much. Nevertheless, they still held on tight. The match went on for 90 minutes without any goal. They went into extra time. During the first half of the extra time, there was no goal, play continued. I gave them more words of encouragement alongside the coach, and two minutes to the end of the second half of extra time, my team scored a goal, the goal that saw us lift the trophy. We won. We celebrated. Finally, I told my teammates that no one is irreplaceable in life, we just have to learn to work as a single unit and to adapt to conditions around us. What I exhibited was true leadership and that's why I am the captain of the team.
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