The NDA soccer team has not had a perfect season. We are battling to make tournament with our 7-7-1 record. We had been trying to find a way to get on a winning streak, so we decided to turn to what we arguably know best…superstitions. Now, this may seem silly to most because winning is supposed to be about skill, hard work, team spirit, etc., but when in doubt, our team turns to superstitions. Ever since I was on the team as a freshman, I have been flooded with different superstitions and every year, some were added, removed, and some stayed the same forever. Examples of some that have cycled through are certain braids someone has to do, a group huddle with the starters, handshakes, being in-sync for warmups, and many individual rituals that everyone holds each other accountable for.

This season, it was challenging to find permanent superstitions because my teammates and I tried to stick to them, but then we realized we weren’t winning, so the superstitions weren’t working. We seemed to add and subtract superstitions every game until we found the magical stick. We were warming up for our game against Brockton and for some reason, one of my teammates picked up a stick and then for some even weirder reason, people started to bite the stick. It didn’t seem that weird at the time so everyone ended up biting the stick and the same girl that initiated the biting decided that if we won, she would keep the stick and it would be added to the list of superstitions. We won the Brockton game, so we all agreed to bite the stick before games because at this point, we were open to anything. Flash forward to our next game against Arlington. We had already lost to Arlington this season, but we knew they were beatable so in the warm-up line we all bit the stick, hoping for its magical powers to help us during this game. Our team beat Arlington in an extremely exciting match where we pulled out a 3-2 win. There were phenomenal goals scored by Shannon Levangie and by Olivia Mucci. When the final whistle blew, we all swarmed our goalie, Haley Roberts, and we could all feel the magical energy that comforted us that maybe there was a chance we could make tournament. This magical air also comforted us because we knew we had something to rely on, the stick. I think in the Arlington game we were able to transfer the faith we had in that stick to faith that we could win the game.

Our most recent game was Austin Prep and as you can guess, we all bit the stick. Unfortunately, we did not get the win we were hoping for, but we still managed to tie. The thing about the tie is that we have never tied this season, so it reaffirmed our belief that the stick is making a difference. We have three more games left and we have to win one and either tie or win another, so we are hoping for some extra magic from our mighty stick!!!

p.s. please come to our senior night this Saturday-October 26th at 3 pm!!