In the fall of 2014, my mom gave my 11-year-old brother a choice: Play football at the risk of not playing very much or play for the Dubuque Soccer Club. He decided to try out for the soccer team, since he played before when he was younger. As I watched him walk onto the practice field for the first time from the car, neither of us knew that he was walking onto the game that would lead him to meet his childhood best friends and affect our lives forever.

After Aidan, my brother, fell in love with DSC, I signed up the following year. Soccer was embedded into our brains from that point forward. We continued to play year after year, and even when we picked up new hobbies or dropped other activities, soccer was always there.

We both have met best friends through soccer, and Aidan’s friends have stayed close all the way through middle school, high school, and now they are all seniors here at Dubuque Senior High School. Aidan Obermueller, Foster Hull, Ryan Connolly, Jacob Konrardy, and Zenebe Andrews all play on the Senior Soccer team, and have been through everything together.

From accomplishments like Jacob winning TH athlete of the week, to fun events like Homecoming dances, all the memories they make are with each other. They have created a bond that can never be broken, and they have soccer to thank for that.

Ironically, everyone in the group also has a younger brother, who plays soccer on DSC and either will play or already does play for the Senior Soccer team. Now that they are all seniors, the younger siblings will be the next generation of DSC and Senior players.

Soccer has influenced us in so many ways, and if you think about it, my brother never would have met his best friends if he didn’t choose to play DSC 7 years ago. All of those special experiences we had stemmed from playing the sport with each other.

The Dubuque Soccer Club and Senior Soccer has made us who we are today: friends, players, teammates, and has given us a chance to live out our middle and high school years to the fullest. Even as our older siblings go off to college and we all live our own lives, I think all of us will be nostalgic of the good old days, of when life was just running around on the soccer field, making new friends