A Rising Star in The Making- Luca’s increasing sports career.

A Rising Star in The Making- Luca’s increasing sports career.

If you ask Luca what he wants to be when he grows up, he might not give a clear answer. He’ll give you two: the one where he’s waving a trophy under stadium lights for saving the game winning shot, and one where he is falling down a hill at 50 miles per hour. At just 12 years old, Luca plays for Seattle United and is just starting his amazing soccer career. He’s a goalie in other words the guy everyone blames when everything goes wrong.” And he loves it.

Perhaps the most amazing feeling of his life came from a penalty shootout, three shots, three saves, one trophy, thousands of newborns being named after him. Well maybe not but he probably felt like “Yeah, I stopped 3 shots and won the tournament,” he said, practically glowing with the energy of someone describing how he got a 99-cent item while its being sold online for a dollar. “It was the happiest moment of my life.” Here’s what happened: The championship came down to penalties, which is soccer’s cruel way of turning soccer into a game of darts starring the goalkeeper. As the dartboard. Luca had to guess correctly three times in a row, which needed more thinking than Luca has ever done and when I asked how he did it, he proved my questions right, “I just kind of…guessed.”

Now I’m not a fan of hearing about his victories,* after all my dreams of a tournament were crus- Ok back to topic, Luca thinks about what to tell me next of what to write, and he tells me about the time he went on a 10-foot jump and landed a successful flip, and the gracefulness of it. Then he remembers the tree. Specifically, he remembers kissing with the tree, in the way that a windshield kisses a bug.

“I messed up the jump and as I barely was staying upright I hit a tree,” he says, and boy can I tell you, he looked like he saw Chernobyl with his own eyes. ” “Did a yard sale. Skis went everywhere. Nearly pooped my pants.”

Nearly pooped his pants. At forty miles per hour. While donating his skis to the entire mountain.

For those who don’t understand, a yard sale” is ski slangs polite term for absolute destruction of dignity and your body. Skis: detached. Poles: vanished into the snow like they’d never existed. Dignity: currently somewhere back up the hill. Luca lay there in the white snow, contemplating his life choices and basically crying in shame.

There was a lot of powder, he says, as if this excuses everything. It didn’t hurt as much as it could have.

The tree, which I tried to interview, declined. It has seen worse. It has not seen funnier, but it has seen worse.

Luca saw a lot in his sports career whether it’s wiping out or wiping another team’s chances of winning a tournament off their minds, he still wants to continue his sports career. Now imagine yourself on Lucas team.

*Any jokes made of Luca is a joke I love Luca he’s one of my good friends.