Audience of One

Darby Kendrick

Varsity girls’ soccer is unlike any other sport at Dalat. Unlike other sports, we don't have an abundance of people who want to join the team, we have two seasons in the school year, and we think that we laugh more than all of the other teams combined.

This year for our ACSC tournament, we traveled to Manila, Philippines. We had a goal, one we had been working for since the beginning of the school year: we wanted to place third or higher in the tournament. Throughout the whole tournament, we all went to bed at 9pm, drank more than enough water, and ate the healthiest we could from the options provided. While other teams took trips to the mall and didn't get back until 2am, or ate the desserts provided during lunch, we had our goal in mind and did not want to compromise our playing by not fueling our bodies correctly with nutrition and sleep.  

Our first game resulted in a 1-0 win against St. Paul. The next day we tied 1-1 with Grace, and the following day we lost 2-0 to Morrison. At the end of the day, no matter what the score of our game, we were found smiling and laughing. Not once did we blame each other or have frowns plastered on our faces because of an unwanted result.

After our first three games, we were in the top two of our bracket. This meant we would play the first place team of the other bracket, Faith Academy. If we won this game, we would be in the championship game, but if we lost, we would play for third place.

Something that Coach Frohlich said during our semifinal game against Faith that really stuck me was that “we are playing for the audience of one.” During this particular game, there were many people from Faith Academy in the audience who were cheering on their team. With people in the audience cheering for the opposing team, it can often become frustrating and distracting. As we stood in our team huddle, ready to play our best, we decided we would not be playing for those in the crowd, for our coach, for those watching on live stream, for our school, or even for ourselves; we would be playing for the glory of God, for the audience of one.

We lost to Faith 2-1, and even though we all wish we would have won, we felt like we had glorified God and truly played for the audience of one.