I can't believe it happened to me

• Joshua Bidgood, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2005

MY SHORT STORY
I cannot believe it happened to me. It was the 3rd of June 2002, the football grand finals. I still remember that neck-to-neck game. This is what happened.

My team the, Tigers are playing the Swans for the under 16’s cup. We start with warm-ups. Then we hear the siren. I’m on the bench. The umpire bounces the ball. Our ruckman hits the ball to our left winger. He kicks the ball forward and the centre forward marks it. He kicks the ball through the middle of the goals.
The ball is bounced again, this time the Swan’s win the ruck. They get the ball down to their end of the field. One of our defenders stops their full forward from marking but he regains the ball and snaps it through for a goal. The score now is 6-6. This goes on for all of the first quarter. The score at the end of the quarter is 24-30 the Swans way.
The second quarter starts. I am on the wing. The ball comes to me I kick a long ball to our forward who kicks a goal. We get the ball again. It comes to me, but I am too busy looking at the ball to see where I was going. I run into one of the Swans players. I am knocked to the ground. I instantly felt a sharp pain in my ankle. I hope it isn’t a break. I sit up and to my relief I can still more it easily. “It must be a sprain,” I thought. I went off to rest it though. The score at the end of the second quarter is 43-47 the Swans way.
I stay on the bench for the third quarter because of my ankle. At the end of it, the score is 57-58 the Swan’s way.
It’s the forth quarter and my ankle feels good but my coach told me to stay on the bench until the last five minutes. It’s the last five minutes and we are now 7 points behind. Our full forward who scores a beautiful goal. 1 point the difference now. After three min, the Swans lead by 5 points. One goal will do it. A Swan’s player made a bad mistake and kicked it to a player 5m away from me. It was going to be too high for the kid he kicked it too. I run towards him. I jumped up his back. I stretch out as much as I can and catch the ball. I’m too far out to kick a goal so I am about to kick it to the square but the siren goes. I had to kick a goal to win the grand final. I ran up to the mark and kicked the ball with all I had. It sailed through the air towards the goal and goes through the middle. I did it. I won the grand final for the team. I felt so good. The score was 75-70.

By Joshua Bidgood.