Hello soulmates, I’m Jacquel Spearman, soulciti’s new sports writer. I have been connected to sports my whole life. Growing up, I played basketball, soccer, and football. Then in high school, I ran track and did wrestling for a year. As a sports fan, I like the Atlanta Hawks, the Atlanta Braves, and for the kicker, the Philadelphia Eagles.
Random yes, but the Eagles were the first team that truly encapsulated my love for sports. This was the era of Michael Vick, Desean Jackson, and Lesean Mccoy. They were truly electric on the field together, and when I was younger, I wanted to follow in their footsteps on the field… not off.
My earliest sports-related memory comes from when I was just eight years old, I remember having a soccer game in the humid hours of the night in Killeen, Texas. I suited up and took the field next to my twin sister. Lined up on the other side was little Kimberly, aka “Princess Peach”, and her Toad Kingdom behind her. So naturally, I was terrified. I was not the most talented or naturally gifted soccer player on the field, but I’ve always had a burning spirit for competition.
So in the famous words of Denzel Washington, “I was leaving there with something”. The ball gets kicked off and is immediately sent towards me. Kimberly is across from me with a petrified look on her face. She had no idea what I had in store for her. I juggle the ball in front of me and easily pass Kimberly. With a big grin on my face, I see the goal quickly approaching. However, I learned quickly that nothing comes easy in the real world. Kimberly’s Mario, her 5 ‘, 7” older brother, steps up to take the ball away. The next move I put on Mario would’ve made the great Allen Iverson jealous. I performed a nasty crossover to advance past Mario and now it’s me versus the goalie.
Up to this point, I have never scored a goal before in my illustrious soccer career. Today, I was going to change the narrative that I didn’t belong, I should be on the bench, or whatever Kimberly’s dad was yelling from the sidelines. I squared up with the goalie and we locked eyes. I looked left to throw off his gaze and kicked the ball into the goal going right. I did it… that’s all I could think in my head at the moment.
I remember the deafening screams and cheers as we shortened the score from 10-0 to 10-1. I was in a trance until my sister grabbed me and picked me up off the ground, waking me out of it. That would be the first and last goal of my soccer career but a memory that I will never forget. Just in case I happen to run into Kimberly and her Toad Kingdom again, I have something to rub in their faces.
Jacquel Spearman is a 2024 graduate of Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications. He was also accepted into the Pulitzer Center Fellowship, that will allow him to travel to Berlin, Germany this summer to research how discrimination against African-American hair affects the African-American psyche.
