The Challenge

Don’t judge me by what I’m about to confess… Soccer is the greatest sport. Period. Of course, I’m completely biased. I started playing when I was 7 and grew up identifying myself as a soccer player. It’s competitive. It’s athletic. It’s social. Watching players dance with the ball, or better yet – being the player making the moves – is what makes soccer epic. I’ve played and loved the game ever since.

But things have changed. The game I love is pretty hard on the body. According to Sports Medicine on About.com, “some statistics says [sic] that a female soccer player is eight times more likely to injury [sic] her ACL than a male soccer player.” This is probably why I played less than a third of the season this year. My old ACL/knee issues reared up. I spent the majority of my time injured on the sidelines. Getting frustrated. Getting angry.

With one game left of the season, it’s time to face the fact that soccer probably isn’t a smart choice if I want to be able to run and play with my future children. My challenge is that my love for playing soccer has made it difficult for me to find a comparable sport. But if I’m completely honest, I haven’t really given other sports a chance. I tried volleyball, basketball, and baseball when I was a kid and I sucked. But I suppose that doesn’t mean there isn’t another sport out there that an almost 30-something could love and play. Right? Which brings me to this blog. I have decided that I won’t find a better, more appropriate sport if I don’t try to actually find one. So my challenge for the next year will be trial and error.

Here are the rules of this challenge:

1. Between now and January 2012 I will try a new sport every month.
2. I must participate in the sport at least once per week for all four weeks in the month.
3. I can participate in the sport by myself or with a friend as my crutch (figuratively of course!).
4. The sports can be team-based or individual. They can also be “loosely” defined as sports too – in other words, it doesn’t have to be an Olympic sport.
5. I will write about the good and the bad to ensure I don’t simply dismiss something because it’s not soccer.

The whistle blows to start game day the first week of February 2011. Come back soon and see what I'll be playing in the month of love.