Author Spotlight
Emma Krause
“Dome is home! Dome is home!” chanted the group of roughly 13 IB juniors at the KC Soccer Dome before their last Friday night game of the season. The SME Soccer Senate Team ended their final game with a 10-2 win.
Throughout eight games of 40-minute drives every week for two months, the Senate finished their season with a 2-6 record and a handful of unique memories — all preserved on team member junior Sabrina Dean’s pink digital camera and junior Roberto Galicia’s Video Club hype videos.
After the first season came to an end, the team had found an outlet to momentarily forget about their looming IB grades by cheering for each other at games and grabbing ice cream at midnight afterward.
The Senate was started by juniors Caroline Gould, Kate Heitmann and Marin Bryant. Bryant had wanted to start a recreational soccer team at East since her freshman year as an athletic outlet without the stress of actual high school soccer that could still allow for a fun and competitive environment. When Gould and Heitmann proposed the idea of starting a team with their IB friends, Bryant couldn’t have been more excited.
Once the three juniors were set on the idea, they recruited as many people — some with soccer experience and some none at all — as they could to join their team. They found the Soccer Dome’s Friday Night Coed League and signed up. They were ready to go.
The only problem? The team of 16 and 17-year-olds accidently signed up to play in a league full of 30 and 40-year-olds who take the soccer games way more seriously than them.
With only two actual soccer players on the team, the Senate has made attempts to work on the sport outside of gameplay, but with everyone’s busy schedules, the idea of hosting practices were unrealistic.
“At least nine out of ten teams we played against took it way too seriously and they would be yelling at us, and one of our players got flipped off after blocking a shot,” Louis Prosser-Gebardt said. “Our team is always getting hit against the walls. We play aggressive people and it seems a lot of people are just getting drunk at the dome and taking their aggression out on 17-year-olds.”
But the age difference — and constantly being bashed by adults twice their age and skill level — doesn’t stop the Senate from using their 40-minute carpool drive to the Soccer Dome to hype the team up by blasting Chiquitita by ABBA or any Britney Spears song from their “SOCCER” playlist all the way there.
The Senate has impacted its players in more ways than Gould, Heitmann and Bryant could have predicted when they first turned in the registration money and printed official jerseys.
Their lack of soccer skills and clashing schedules wasn’t the biggest problem the team founders expected — they needed a name. So after a 15-minute FaceTime call listing off potential name ideas, Heitmann blurted out the idea “The Senate,” and they all burst out laughing.
“There’s this website where you can see all the teams you’re playing each week and we wanted to be intimidating, so we thought if people said ‘Oh, we’re playing ‘The Senate’ this week,’ it would be really intimidating,” Cosgrove said.
The team was originally a few IB kids who wanted to create a soccer team but with the help of the @smesenate instagram and advertising from members, they’ve gathered an even bigger group of subs and tag-a-longs who aren’t a part of the IB junior group. Prosser-Gebhardt, a non-IB player, said one of his favorite things about the Senate is being able to interact with his friends and make new ones too.
“Normally my IB friends are off doing their own things and I feel like [playing on the Senate] is the time I can hangout with all of them and just kind of mix up friend groups or hangout with different people,” Prosser-Gebardt said.
Playing on the Senate had a big social impact on junior Michael Newbold. Newbold, who, just two months ago, couldn’t keep track of any of his current friends’ names. Now, he feels closer than ever with them — knowing practically everything from their food intolerances to their class schedules for senior year.
“I don’t socialize with people a lot, partially due to the immense workload [of school] and a combination of other numerous factors,” Newbold said. “Senate is one of the first teams or frenzies that I’ve actually shown up to and I’ve brought myself into a communal participant and I personally feel that it’s good for socializing, for those that are more unfamiliar to the world outside.”
Newbold pointed out that while playing on this team he’s been able to see his school friends in a different perspective than he does while they’re at school. According to Newbold, most people didn’t interact with classmates outside of school in Shenzhen, China, where he grew up. Now, he likes that he gets to do that with his friends during the games and other team activities.
“When I see people having fun and putting on a different face or personality outside of school, it makes me feel happy,” Newbold said.
Though their soccer season is complete, this isn’t an end to the Senate’s athletic endeavors. Their next sport? They’re thinking volleyball, kickball or even four square. No matter what field or court they end up on, they will remain a team.
Leave a Reply