Two minutes for forever
This post was provided by News Now Warsaw
By Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw
We all have moments in our lives that stand out for us.
Those are events or days that you not only remember the results of, but you remember everything about them. Maybe you can still feel how warm it was, or how cold. Maybe you remember what you had to eat for breakfast that morning.
It could be your wedding day, or the day you became a parent for the time.
I remember everything about those days with great fondness.
But there’s a day I remember with the same clarity as those, but I remember it for very different reasons.
It was October 19, 1985. The sun was bright, and its path across the Northern Indiana sky was sinking lower and lower every day.
It was stunningly warm for mid-October. The thermometer reached 86 degrees that afternoon with a south wind that was steady at 20 miles per hour.
It was 1 p.m., and the referee’s whistle sounded loud and long for the kickoff of the Regional Championship soccer game between the Argos Dragons and the Culver Military Academy Eagles.
The winner would play in the Final Four the following weekend.
The format for the tournament was different then. This is before the IHSAA took control of it, and there weren’t as many schools participating in it at that time. The lead up to this sunny Saturday were games on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
We’d won them all.
Now, here we were, facing our bitter rivals, knowing that if we won, we’d secure our place in the rich heritage of Argos Soccer.
The field had no name at the time, and very few bleachers for the fans to sit on. But there was a hillside between the baseball field and the soccer field, and that day the students and fans had filled it from one goal line to the other. Twenty minutes out from the kickoff, those fans were on blankets and in lawn chairs and they were at full throat.
We scored first.
CMA deflected a shot out of bounds, which meant a corner kick. Taking corner kicks was my primary job on that team, and my first kick was to the near post and it was nudged back out of bounds. I noticed that the keeper was expecting the kick out away from the goal and was cheating off his line as soon as I kicked the ball.
So on my second attempt, I used that strong wind to my advantage and curled the ball from the penalty spot back toward the net.
It went right over his head and into the net on the fly. I had scored on my own corner kick.
The roar that came from the hillside was deafening.
It was 2-0 until the Eagles had the wind in the second half. They scored to make it 2-1, and it stayed that way until the 10-minute mark. I was moved back from my normal left-wing position back to a defensive position, and I took a cleat to my right thigh. I had to leave for treatment and the warm day helped loosen it up about five minutes later.
My coach made me prove that I could run before he would put me back in, which I did. He sent me over to go back in.
And there I stood, waiting…and waiting…and waiting.
And then it happened.
CMA took a shot that hit the crossbar and bounced back straight out to an Eagle who tapped it into the net and tied the game with 1:58 to play.
Although it’s not fair to think this, I will always believe that if I had been on the field, that shot would never have made it to the crossbar.
The game went to overtime, and CMA scored again to lead 3-2.
That’s how the game ended.
We were that close — 1:58 away.
It isn’t something that I am reminded of daily, but many things trigger the memories of it. Windy, warm autumn days. A game clock that stops with 1:58 left on it. The sound of a soccer ball hitting a metal goal post.
In the eternal big picture, I shouldn’t feel like this anymore. I know that.
But 40 years later the pain is just as real as it was that afternoon. I have come to grips with the fact that I am incapable of getting over it. Yes, life goes on, and my life has been great.
Still, I left a piece of me on the field in Argos that October day. It’s still there. It’s been mowed over and stepped on by soccer cleats for 40 fall soccer seasons. No one can see it, but it remains just the same.
It’s a scar, and scars heal, but they never go away.
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