Intramural Soccer
Leadership is the hardest area for me to reflect on given my pre-conceived notions about what exactly leadership is. I know that leadership is not constrained to formal authority positions, but nonetheless I tend to struggle recognizing informal and individual leadership I undertake. This issue was par for the course during my experience as a captain for my intramural soccer team for two semesters. However, after reflecting on my Strength-Finder report and analyzing how my strengths played a role in my leadership I displayed in this activity, I am more confident in evaluating my role as a leader in formal and individual leadership scenarios.
​
My freshman year of college I met a lot of people with different backgrounds, but almost everyone had at least one similarity, we all enjoyed playing soccer. On my dorm floor alone around fifteen kids had expressed interest in participating in an intramural soccer team. Unfortunately, no one wanted to pay the entry fee for the league, likely because we had not known each other long enough to determine if people were trustworthy in paying their shares, and nothing came of the shared interest my freshman year. My sophomore year in the fall of 2022, our fortune changed when I won a raffle for a free team. Since I was still in contact with most of the people I meet my freshman year, we were able to get just enough for a team. In the fall of 2023, having played one season already, I decided to pay the registration fee so the team could run it back. Besides registration, other formal responsibilities that came with being a team captain were attending league meetings, making sure my team knew the rules unique to the league, recruiting players, approving rosters, and game results, and taking initiative in communicating about players available for practice and games.
​
Taking the Clifton Strengths-Finder has allowed me to contextualize a lot of the decisions I made and helped make me aware of how I used my individual strengths to contribute to the team. One of my five strengths is connectedness, which according to the report entails being a bridge builder for different cultures. Similarly, part of the reason I thought having a soccer team would be a good idea was because it was a shared interest for a lot of us, even with all our different backgrounds. The diversity we were able to have on a team of under ten players is quite surprising. We had players as young as eighteen and as old as thirty, from countries like Cameroon, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, France, and the United States. Even religiously the team had an abundance of different representation, there were three different denominations of Christians on the team, two Muslims, and multiple non-religious players throughout the two years. The team got new players to join through various means as well, whether it was meeting people in the dormitories, classes, playing pick-up basketball, through Mav Life, and just asking people kicking a soccer ball around if they wanted to join a team. For the team to get to know each other it was important to do things outside of just soccer. Twice after a game the team went out to eat and we often would do more casual activities together like playing video games and watching sporting events. Doing these activities allowed us to have more casual conversation and get to know each other on a more personal level. I find it very cool that despite all the differences the team had we were all able to get together and have a fun time while getting to learn about each other.
​
My strengths of responsibility and my ability as a developer relate heavily to the team dynamic my team had. Considering we were all essentially peers in the sense that despite our differences, we were all enrolled at the same university, no one felt it was right to have one of us be an authoritative figure with power over the others. My responsibility lay in my role in making sure we had enough players for games and that they knew the rules. I was technically in charge of the roster and substitutions during the game, but this was only in the most minuscule sense. The team had players who had played since they had walked and some who were just trying it out for the first time. The leadership style used by me, and the team, was the democratic style and because of that we were all developers. We all had our own playing styles and soccer philosophy, and it took time, both seasons, to become accustomed to our teammate’s styles. For example, I am a strong proponent of keeping the ball on the ground unless someone is crossing the ball across field completely, but not everyone played that way. We adapted to our different styles through communication, constructive criticism, and encouragement.
​
My strength of belief ostensibly played the smallest role, but it was still important, nonetheless. Intramural soccer can get shockingly tense, I would say more so than high school soccer. I used my values to keep a cool head and display good sportsmanship in the games and I am glad to say that my team did for the most part as well. The final strength identified in the report is that I am restorative; I look to solve problems. I did this when participating in team discussions about tactics. Specifically, in the first year of the playoffs we played the number one seeded team who had beaten us soundly twice. Having played them already, we knew what their style of play revolved around individual dribbling and skill and their weakness was in their lack of passing. They certainly had more skilled players, but we devised a strategy of not trying to steal the ball whatsoever, so they could not get by us through dribbling, therefore forcing them to either pass or take difficult shots. We had our fastest players always guard their fastest players so they could not simply blow by us with speed either. This strategy worked better than we could have anticipated, and we ended up going into a shootout after tying in regulation with a score of two to two. We sadly lost the shootout, but still were happy with our result, especially with the frustration evident by the other team showing our strategy worked.
​
This experience has strengthened my belief that my strengths invariably derive from my values. I appreciate and enjoy meeting new people and learning about their experiences and perspectives, and in this instance that directly corresponded to connecting and meeting new people. I enjoy helping others improve and succeed at challenges and in life in general and for the intramural soccer team that translated to the strength of not only me, but the team, in helping each other to play as a single unit. My values of faith, integrity, and responsibility can be seen in the strengths I used to approach the game, belief, and responsibility. Even though it was something as simple as following the rules and treating opponents with respect. More than anything this experience showed me that even activities I enter thinking are only for recreational reasons, can be opportunities for me to apply my strengths in some way. For connectedness I will always try to enter situations with an open mindset and learn about other people’s experiences. For belief, I hope to act consistently with my morals no matter what the activity is, this would also include being responsible. For my strengths of developer and restorative, I think these correlate to the type of leadership I decide to use and how it best fits the needs of the task or group with which I am working, and identifying how I can best help others maximize using their own strengths. Overall, I hope to be cognizant of my strengths and implementing them in my future leadership experiences. In a professional setting, although I am not certain of precisely what I want to do, I do know that I want to help others in some way. Being able to identify people’s strengths and being able to collaborate with others in addition to determining what leadership style to apply when doing so, will both be beneficial universally in a professional setting.
