Post #8

My high school experience was dictated by the fact that I played soccer. Our girls' soccer program had been state champions in previous years and had produced all-americans. I remember my first soccer camp as a fifth grader and looking up to the girls of the varsity team admiring how close they all were and I remember saying that is a team. When it was my freshman year in high school the amount of new faces was overwhelming I of course fell back to my safety spot on the soccer team. When we first began the adventure of varsity soccer my freshman year I believe a pseudo community was formed. The seniors that lead the team that year had good intentions but I don't even think they knew the names of the freshman girls. It felt a bit fake as older girls bonded and the freshman girls sat their thinking what were doing here? We thought because of our age that this was ok. But as Peck states it was a very underdeveloped community.
As we continued through our high school careers gaining more and more responsibility on the team obviously more people were added and there seemed to be a conflict of ideas. Chaos was created. Some girls weren't as focused as others and it showed on the field. Ages once again became a deciding factor in who you got really close with on the team and within those ages cliques of different girls formed. This was a recipe for disaster if you are trying to bring back a state championship. We had the mold but weren't sticking together. What I think is really interesting about Peck's theory for the path out of chaos is that I believe this community went through both organization and emptiness. The team went through organization my junior year as our coach handed down strict rules and the seniors leading the team matched that. I remember specific instances in practice that year thinking wow our these girls serious? While this seemed to be a dictatorship all of a sudden it did break down a lot of the cliques and establishing a structure allowed our performance on the field to become routine. Something was beginning to blossom but it was not quite there yet.
It was finally my class's senior year and day one we had a meeting with our head coach and decided that this year was going to be different. This class of seniors was going to set a different mood. We took on the idea of emptiness and acknowledge the fact that we were not going to anywhere individually but that everyone on that team that year played a critical role in what we wanted to accomplish. With the seniors taking that mentality it filtered out throughout the team. The different ages never formed cliques and there was a sense of structure but no where near to what it was like the prior year. That was when we as New Trier Girls Soccer became an authentic community. While we accomplished many things that year, including bringing home a state title, breaking Illinois soccer records, donating thousands of dollars to community programs, but the best legacy as seniors we left was that sense of community. I recognize that this is an authentic community because even though girls have now come and gone we can always go back and our welcomed with open arms. I am two years out now and I still get giddy when I see our field and our girls playing on it. The biggest sentiment to the NTGS community is that everyone who graduates no matter how long ago still feels that they are apart of that community.