ode to my shinny-shin-shins

10 years ago I found a love that required work - hard work - much endurance, pain, perseverance, grace, strategy, thinking, and skill. Hitting the field in 4th grade after the school bell rang - clad in my pink shorts and Franklin shinpads, I was ready to go. Never did I expect this moment and season after countless season to follow that a love for the sport and game of "football" or soccer would be birthed.

In my career I've managed to outgrow 2 pairs of shinguards - and to destroy one. A few weeks ago I found myself injured after repeated trauma to the same area of my shin (basically I was kicked 6-8 times unintentionally by different boys over the span of 2 weeks and about 6 soccer games). The results: 1)a broken/cracked shinguard 2)nearly a broken/cracked leg and 3) an adventurous, disappointing trip to 2 ERs in Canadia only to receive no luck in getting an x-ray.(I suppose that's what you get when you play with boys who know you're tough - there's not a whole lot of mercy given out, even in Bible college - the biggest downfall to this poor philosophy of theirs is sometimes the lack of technical training and skills of the players - lots of our guys play soccer for the first time at BBC - interesting.)

Regardless, I was quite disappointed and pained when I found out my shinguards that lasted me 4 years of highschool soccer and almost 2 years of university were broken. (Trust me, I was kicked pretty hard - surprisingly the first 3 times I didn't even have my shinny-shin-shins on. Whoops!) Clearly this was a sign that I needed to discard them:




One thing is for sure - these shinguards certainly bore a stench of 6 years of play and stains of hard work, not even the finest bleach products or febreeze could remove. Our equipment may fail us, but the game presses on. I guess it's time for some new shinguards.