College Soccer Player Acts Out After Not Making Varsity

“Brandon" is a naughty American in more ways than one, but he specifically recalls one instance during his days as a college soccer player, when he decided his college’s money would be better spent on beer than food for its junior varsity soccer team on its way back to campus following a losing soccer match.

Here is his naughty story as told to friend and TNA citizen journalist Mark L.

Mark L: So I understand you were kicked off of your varsity soccer team in college?

Brandon: Well, I wasn’t kicked off, because I was never on the team to begin with. But I was told that I would never play soccer for my college by my coach.

So you were on the junior varsity team?

Yes, I was on junior varsity. I was the oldest member of the team; I think I was a junior and the rest of the team was sophomores and freshmen.

So were you pretty much destined to play varsity?

Well I had the skill, I just don’t think I had the commitment or attitude the coach was looking for. And I wasn’t too happy about being relegated to junior varsity, so I sort of acted out.

So what was the incident that prompted the coach to tell you you’d never play varsity soccer?

Well, I played soccer for a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. We often had to take these road trips that would be several hours to the next little school. We’d drive along these country roads, and it’d be pretty boring. So we had one game at a school maybe two hours away. We were given a per diem --$20 per person – and after the game, which we lost, I suggested to all of these younger students that instead of wasting the money on food that we could probably get two or three cases of beer and we could have a pretty good road trip back.

Now I was the driver of the van, so I told them I was happy to drive and that we should all have a good time on the way back. They agreed with me, or they went along with me I should say, so we went to a liquor store and illegally bought a couple cases of beer – I say illegally because I had a fake I.D. – and on the road trip back I drove and these freshmen and sophomores were pretty tipsy by the time we got back to school.

So you’re probably being looked at as the hero by some of these guys?

Well I would think that some of the people would have looked at me as a pretty cool guy. Looking back, I’m not sure why I even suggested it – I was driving, I wasn’t even drinking. But our soccer team, of course, like any NCAA soccer team, had a pretty strict no-drinking policy. We were all underage; we shouldn’t have been doing it. And I was the hero to probably a couple of impressionable students, but there were a couple, as it became clear later, that were less impressed, and felt like they had to go along with it.

What happened?

I found out later … I got word from the varsity soccer coach a few months later, after the season had finished, that I would never play varsity soccer, ever, for the college.

Because of this incident?

Yeah. It became clear later that one of these soccer players told his parents that this is what we did on our way back from our match. The parents were pretty upset and called the varsity soccer coach. Of course my name figured prominently in their complaint. From then on I was pretty much blackballed.

Now, right after you had dropped these kids off, did you feel good about yourself, like you were cool?

These are the antics that go on in college that, thankfully through the maturation process, you’re not doing for the next 20 years. I just figured, at the time, it was a fun way to kill 2.5 hours on the road, driving through a state in the Midwest. I wasn’t doing it to be cool; I was doing it to kill boredom, really. I think a good captain looks out for his players, and I was sort of the captain for that road trip. There was a part of me that though I was helping out the younger guys on the team by keeping them entertained.

So when you were told you’d never play varsity soccer, did that mean you could still become a senior and you could still play on the junior varsity team? Or were you pretty much done?

No I was pretty much done. I was what you called washed out.

Did you care about what the coach said?

I did because I had wanted to play varsity soccer but I saw it wasn’t going to happen so I sort of acted out. The coach was a good guy; he actually took the varsity team to the national championship game a couple of years later. He was a very disciplined, motivated coach, but unfortunately he came in two years after I had enrolled in school, so he was not the coach who recruited me.

Was it worth it?

If this had been some Division I school where glory could have come out of playing, where I would have been playing in front of 10,000 fans, lots of chicks and gotten on TV, then I would’ve said no, this little antic was not worth it because I gave up the chance for glory and fame. But for a little shitty Division III school that played soccer amid cornfields, and played against schools with names I’ve never heard of, I guess, in some small way, it was worth it at the time.