#4 Obsession

Well my obsession for a long time has been sports. For the past few years it has been soccer. I am obsessed with Salt Lakes team Real. I have not always liked soccer… truthfully when I was in middle school and high school I always thought it was a sissy sport. I was into football and wrestling, ya know, manly stuff. I won’t go into how I came to love soccer just why I am obsessed with RSL (Real Salt Lake).

After coming home from serving an LDS mission in Northern Italy (I know awesome right?) I made friends with a guy named Randy and he is a huge fan. As our friendship progressed I went to more and more games (he was a season ticket holder), learned the players names, but more importantly learned the coaches name and who he was.

For the longest time I have hated unsportsman like conduct whether it be cheating, “flopping,” embellishing, whining, complaining, trash talking….. is ok though. I have always told family and friends while watching any sporting event that if I coach I will pull players out of the game, or other types of discipline, that display such behaviors.

The coach of RSL, Jason Kris, instilled in the team the philosophy of “The team is the star.” Regardless of how good you are we don’t want people like Kobe, LeBron, Farve, Jeter, or Beckham on our team. The ego does the team no good. Win AS a team NOT because of one or two people on the team. Jason has shown more than once that when a player feels that they are better or deserve more they miss out on a game or two, or in a few cases they are traded away.

Another thing that Jason has brought to the team is playing with class no matter how dirty the other team is and a sense of family. The players not only treat each other as family but they also are very involved with the fans and many of them interact with fans on a daily basis!

Now I am a season ticket holder. I am a fanatic at games, constantly heckling opposing players and cheering on my team with my face painted at every one. I made a twitter account just so I could interact more with the players and have more access to information. I travel to a few away games every year and I have a lot of RSL stuff and keep adding to it! I am proud of my obsession!

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