I would have wrote about going to the tryout before I left but I had to scramble to get everything together to get down to San Jose. So, this is basically what happened from when I registered for the tryout to when I got back to Alberta.
Over the last couple weeks I've been talking with a teammate about the Canadian National Team (CNT) and how awesome it would be to have that experience and to get noticed by them. Right away I started looking online to find things out about the CNT and I got some emails out there and the news I got back from then was that I needed to try and get myself into a professional environment. Last Wednesday my friend and I were talking about how awesome it would be to play pro and instantly I started looking thing up online for all the pro leagues in North America and obviously the one that strikes as the most appealing is Major League Soccer (MLS). I went on to every teams web page and I found two teams that were having open tryouts, San Jose on February 6 and Kansas City on March 12 and 13. The registration for the San Jose one was $75 and there was 200 spots. Since it was so close to the tryout I didn't think that I would even get a spot but sure enough I got an email confirming that I got into the tryout. I had to make a decision that night if I wanted to go or not because I had to book flights and hotels. I called my parents and we worked out the money part of things so on Wednesday I booked my flights down to California. I decided to fly out of Montana because flying nationally in the states was cheaper than flying internationally. So, I was flying from Great Falls, Montana to Salt Lake City, Utah and then from Utah to Oakland, California. On the Thursday I booked my hotels and called my credit card company and went to the bank and had everything set up for my trip. On Friday I made sure I had everything finalized and then packed everything that I need for my trip.
I'll talk about the travel, there and back, in this paragraph and then talk about the tryout in the next. So, I woke up on Saturday at 7 to double check everything and then my roommate gave me a ride to Great Falls at 8. It took us 3 hours to get there and then I had delays in Great Falls because of the snow. By the time I left it was close to 2pm and my connection was at 310. We got to Salt Lake at 313 and I missed my flight by 3 minutes. I had to get onto another flight which didn't leave until 8pm and it got me into Oakland at 930. I caught a cab from Oakland to just outside the city to a town called Danville, which is where the tryouts were held. I got in at about 10pm. Adding all the up my travel time that day was 14 hours. The way back was about the same. I got up at 730 and got a cab at about 830 which got me to the airport at about 9-ish. I checked in and everything was going fine; I flew out of Oakland at 1015 and got to Salt Lake at about 1230. I had a 3 hour wait in the airport there and flew out at 330. I got to Great Falls at about 5 because there was snow there still. I turned my phone on and text my roommate to see if he was close but he hadn't even left Lethbridge yet, in fact, he didn't leave until about 715. There was quite a bit of snow in Lethbridge and Great Falls and it took him about 4 hours to drive down and he got there at 1115. 6 hours I was waiting in that stupid airport and I almost read an entire book, and I suck and hate reading. So, another 3 hour drive back to Lethbridge and I was back at 230am. Adding all the up I travelled for 18 hours on Monday. I don't think I've travelled so much in such a short amount of time.
Now the tryout. They were supposed to give you an email which said what time your check in was at because there were 3 different times; 8, 10, and 1. I never got this email so I was up at 6 and ate only a small continental breakfast at 630. I called a cab at 7 and waited for an hour and no cab arrived. Luckily someone else that was at the tryout was staying at the same hotel and offered me a ride. I got to the field for 8 to find out that my check-in time was at 1pm. I just hung around the field to watch people play and see what kinda of skill there was out there. At the 10am check-in they were missing a defender and asked if I wanted to join in for this game as well so I did. The way it was set up was 3 teams played each other twice for 30 minute games. It ended up being me and some guy that looked like he'd never played before in the back and pretty much everyone else pushed forward to show the coaches their "skill". I lost count of how many times it was a 5-on-2 on me and that other guy because my team would lose the ball and not run back and I didn't remember there names so I couldn't yell at them to get back and who to mark up and I would try using the number on their jersey but they didn't know what number they were so it got quite frustrating. Most of the time I would stop them coming at us or force them to have a bad shot that was easy for the goalie but me not being able to control the back line just made me look like shit. And, if the other team would score then my teammates would try to blame me because I should have been marking them. I was ready to lose it on all of them. So that is what happened for 60 minutes. It was 12 now and I hadn't ate anything since 630 and couldn't leave because my actual time was about to come up. I also forgot to grab my water bottle when I was leaving because I was nervous that I was going to miss my check-in time so I stole a little plastic water bottle from the ref's cooler but I didn't get enough water in me to counter the 25 degree heat. Which isn't crazy hot, but going from -10 to +25 in a few hours will hit you pretty hard. So I was sun burnt, dehydrated, and ridiculously hungry and now I had to play again. This time it was the same thing, me and one other guy in the back but it was even worse because I was beat and the team we were playing was better than the ones before. So, time and time again we were getting caught in 5-on-2s and there was nothing we could really do. Personally, besides the dehydration and all of that I played alright. My passes were on, my long ball was on, I was playing with composure and I was trying to talk the best I could. There was maybe only 3 or 4 times all day that I got beat 1-on-1. No one could muscle me off the ball when I had it. However, looking at my play from the coaches perspectives, I did not bring my best game. I was not playing at the level they were looking for.
Now...to go to Kansas City or not to go to Kansas City?????
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