Angry Peter

Author: Peter Yordan

One day, looking back during one of those Wonder Years moments, I might realize that my college career came to an end on an intramural soccer field on Oct. 26 when the Iron Monkeys, my intramural soccer team, were eliminated from the playoffs. It was a ragtag band of teenagers that stepped onto that same shortened soccer field behind the gym four years ago, and it was a grizzled group of twenty-somethings that shook hands and stepped off of it on Sunday. The Iron Monkeys fought hard that day, just like we always did, but it was not to be. We battled to a fierce 1-1 draw in regulation before letting it slip away in overtime. And just like that it was all over.

For most students intramural soccer may not be the heart of the athletic program at Middlebury, but it has been for me. Those players out there with me were my varsity teammates and that intramural league was our NESCAC. We took every game far too seriously. Every victory was heroic, every defeat was humiliating, and every unexcused absence was criminal. We even outfitted ourselves in uniforms. To understand how all of our fall semesters could be consumed by an informal bi-weekly soccer league, you have to understand that, in some ways, we grew up together on that soccer field. Bear with my outrageous hyperbole, because intramural soccer is in many ways a perfect metaphor for the Middlebury experience as a whole.

We were a motley assortment that first year, frantically searching for enough players to fill out a lineup - soccer experience was not always a requisite. We didn't win much at all. In fact, we were laughed off the field at least a couple times. It was just like freshman year - lost, unsure of ourselves, stumbling more often than not.

Sophomore year was when it all came together. Rechristened Iron Monkeys, our team was lean and hungry, with a few new recruits. We were good, and we won - a lot. Off the field we discarded a few freshman friends, added a couple new ones, and basically felt like we owned the place and knew all the ropes. We swaggered all the way to the semifinals that year, played under the lights on a cold November night. We lost a 2-1 heartbreaker, but we knew we had arrived.

Junior year was fractured. Both the team and the year existed in the broken netherworld of school year abroad. Friends were gone, and everything seemed a bit strange. I heard Iron Monkey game reports from my perch in Segovia, Spain.

And now, senior year the overwhelming feeling for the season was one of finality. And of course, the season went far, far too fast. And what I will remember most of all are not the wins and losses or the grades or accolades but the time spent on the fields and in the dorms and dining halls with my friends, my fellow Iron Monkeys.