The Chronicles of Tinna

We had the annual ‘End of the season’ wrap-up party last night with ÍR (my football club). It’s where the two top senior teams for both the men’s and the women’s side come together and eat good food and give out recognitions to those players that did well over the season. There’s top goal scorer, most improved player, young player of the year and most valuable player.

Way, way, way (and I mean way) out of left field I got the MVP award. It was so completely unexpected because I only started playing with the senior team in April this year and I’m, you know, slightly older than most of the team. While I’m still young “life-span” wise, 30 is kinda old in women’s football. There are two players that are older than me (they’re totally my idols now :p), but there are 20+ players that are younger (4-15 years younger!). Also, I was recruited in April from the “old girls” team (which only practice two times a week) to help increase the numbers during practices, because the senior team only had a stable of maybe 6 players.

In April and May, before the season started, we had a few practice games which, for the majority of the time, I watched from the sidelines. So I had completely envisioned the summer spent on the bench, but at least I’d get to play football 5-6 times a week during practices, and maybe travel with the team, and thus seeing more of Iceland. (It’s quite embarrassing that I haven’t seen much of my own country. The only times I’ve been outside of Reykjavik has been when traveling for football games — I’ve traveled to countries on the other side of the world (Australia, for instance), but until this summer, I hadn’t been to the east coast of Iceland).

Before this summer started I hadn’t played on a full-sized field for 7 years – I had to retire after a rather destructive knee injury (torn ACL, meniscus and severe cartilage damage) and because the doctor said he couldn’t fix the damage I never got my previous team’s support to get back in the game. I had to fix it myself and it took five years before I played any football again. “Run through the pain and stop being a wuss” has become my motto =) and I think because of how sudden and against my will my departure from football was, I always felt like I still had something left in me, so while I really enjoyed playing with the old girls team, I jumped at the chance at playing real football again.

Quite unexpectedly, the coach put me in the starting XI for the first game! Woo freaking hoo! And in my favorite position too, center midfield. We lost that game, however, quite horribly and it was all because of jittery nerves and lack of communication in the first 20 minutes (we were 3-0 down by then). Granted, we are a very young team with new players (me included) which have only been playing together for a very short time, but this team has great potential and lots of talent, and while we lost the game, we came back in the second half and dominated the play. I had the assist that gave us the goal, but we also had about six other great chances but failed to score. We easily could have won the game if our finishing had been better.

And that’s pretty much how the season went. I kept my starting position and played every game like it was my last. Whenever we would play to our potential (and not drop down to mediocrity – which happened sometimes for unknown reasons) we would win. That required mass amounts of blood, sweat and tears – I think I had a split lip about five times this summer. My jersey sleeves were always caked in blood after the games. It was awesome!