After a tough 2-1 loss Wednesday to Newberry, with both opposing goals scored in the last eight minutes of the match, we jog dripping off our home field and numbly acknowledge the supportive fans that just witnessed us lose our second home game in a row.

This is a loss we want immediately buried behind us. The pain wracking our bodies and hearts in this moment is a crushing dead weight, and we never want to carry such a loss again.

Before we leave the stadium, each and every one of us looks our coach in the eye and re-commits to being "All in, every day, one hundred percent." We will never relive this collective team failure again. Once we leave the field it becomes the past and we are moving forward.

Practice the following evening is surreal - it feels like a scene from "Remember the Titans".
The next hour and a half gives us the opportunity to rediscover ourselves as leaders, as individuals and as a family. We weave through an incomprehensible mass of cones set up on the game field, not knowing where it begins or ends, but we work through it together.

In the stadium stands, we begin a series of challenges that test us mentally and physically. When we succeed as a team, we move up a level. When we fail as a team, we move down. In the span of that practice, as we do sit-ups and push-ups in puddles and our backs and palms turn raw from the biting asphalt, we rediscover a side of ourselves we had lost sight of.

In everything, we succeed as a family and we fail as a family. Leadership emerges in individuals who complete a challenge in a given time and save the team from running extra fitness. We refuse to let one another's shaking arms drop, we count out reps in sync and shout out encouragement constantly in between gasps for air. Finally, we reach the top of the stadium.

When Coach Samar tells us to turn and look out on the field, somehow the mass of cones has transformed into the word "Believe." We could not see it when we were immersed in it on the field, struggling to muddle our way through it. Individually, we would never be able to see how this mess came together to form one single, powerful word. Only as a team picking one another up, challenging each other and collectively pursuing our one goal of reaching the top of the stadium. Together, we are strong enough to achieve our goal and recognize what we can accomplish by acting on belief in our family and ourselves.

In Saturday's home game against Carson-Newman, we take our team-defining practice and translate it into playing a phenomenal game of soccer. The excitement on our sideline and in the stadium is electric as we take chance after chance on goal but just can't get the ball in the back of the net. Even at the start of the second half, the scoreboard reads 0-0, and the collective shout of encouragement from our bench becomes: "Keep shooting! It's coming! IT'S COMING!"

Sure enough, in the 81st minute, a selfless layoff pass from freshman Summer Miller to Jessica Kleinburg results in a beautiful shot from Jessica straight into the back of the goal and we lose our minds at the glorious sound of ball hitting net. The final minutes of the game are critical for us; we know our history of giving up dangerous goals in the last seconds, but not today.

As the clock counts down, we maintain our composure, we play smart but hard, we don't relax and we don't hand over the ball. With the final whistle, we have our first SAC win. Even better than the knowledge we won is our immense pride in being the team that rose up to meet its potential for the full 90 minutes to challenge the defending SAC regular-season champions, regardless of the final score.

We are finally starting to grasp the truth that soccer is infinitely more than just kicking a ball around to score goals. The goals and the win are not the ultimate purpose - any group of selfish individuals with technical skills can accomplish that.

It's about learning to be a part of a unit; a family compensating for one another's weaknesses and celebrating every individual's strengths, shouldering their pain and rejoicing in their triumphs. It means we trust our leaders when we may not understand why and we don't wait for someone else to take responsibility before taking the initiative ourselves.

"Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn't let them down, because you told them the truth. And that truth is that you did everything you could. There wasn't one more thing you could've done. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes and love in your heart? With joy in your heart? If you can do that, gentlemen, then you're perfect." -Friday Night Lights