What?! Oh my goodness. I remember before I got in this magical late-night television world reading about Daily Show vs Nightly Show sports game and the like and thinking, “those people are SO cool! I can’t believe they’re just out there in New York hanging out with each other!”
And now… I’m one of those people!!!
When the email went out asking who wanted to play, I wrote saying I knew practically nothing about soccer, but that I’d love to if they needed people.
And I was welcomed with open arms.
In fact, in our league, you have to have at least one girl on the field at all times, and I was only girl from my work who signed up.
I went out to Brooklyn pretty early in the morning, and got to play out at Pier 6.
The view of the city was gorgeous! I couldn’t believe that was the backdrop to my day. I just felt so exceptionally lucky!
We played a few rounds of soccer. (We also played Nickelodeon and Viacom. We totally won all three of those matches – mainly because we had two phenomenal soccer players on our team.)
Something that was really cool for me was that I stole the ball from Trevor Noah himself. (I kid you not!)
Trevor was exceptionally nice, in case you were wondering. He was a fantastic sport, and took pictures with everybody. He cheered on his team, and he cheered on our team (when we weren’t playing them). He made small talk throughout the day, and was just generally a total sweetheart.
I also loved the camaraderie of our team. Everyone was so nice, and even though I wasn’t awesome at soccer, people were complimentary about my energy level/ability to run, and my willingness to just be a wall and let people run into me while playing defense. I loved hearing my co-workers cheer for me. It was super nice.
(It’s still amazing to me to think how I went from not super fitting in all that crazy well to now having people cheer my name from the sidelines when I steal the ball. Life is really gorgeous, and this day was really gorgeous.)
When soccer was over, we all went to eat together. And then I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge back into Manhattan (crossing things off the list, baby!).