{"id":7802,"date":"2025-07-22T16:26:39","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=7802"},"modified":"2025-07-22T21:16:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T02:16:48","slug":"headers-and-kickers-at-evanston-soccer-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/headers-and-kickers-at-evanston-soccer-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"Headers and kickers at Evanston soccer tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I\u2019ve never played soccer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">That didn\u2019t matter when community and academic associate Ashley Dong asked who would play in a local tournament. As an athlete, I immediately signed up. I didn\u2019t know what to expect.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">On Saturday morning, after meeting with my instructor, J.A. Adande, I ran two miles to the Evanston Unity Soccer Festival. When I arrived, already out of breath, Dong put me right in the game.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I quickly realized my inexperience wasn\u2019t a problem. Our first matchup was against a group of elementary schoolers. Two matches later, our group of 12 played a team of grown men who could very well be semi-professional players. When not in the game, I stood on the sidelines shouting chants like \u201cWe are cherubs!\u201d and \u201cI believe that we will win!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Each team exhibited sportsmanship \u2014 even high-fiving the opponents after goals. Every game ended with a handshake line between sides.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Between matches, my teammates and I danced to upbeat music blasting from the nearby DJ booth. Some of us made friends with vendors and strangers, resulting in free blue Gatorade.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tournament rules called for no score keeping or refereeing. But we did come away with a prize: a golden trophy of a soccer ball, a cleat and a misspelled engraving proclaiming us \u201cUnity Festival Best Newcommer 2025.\u201d The shiny metal cup is now prominently displayed in the Jones Hall great room, where Cherub F.C. team members repeatedly walk by to kiss it. Despite the comical spelling error, or maybe in part because of it, it\u2019s a reminder of the day we became champions.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cherubs compete and win a prize at Evanston Unity Soccer Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":266,"featured_media":8320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,340],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[477],"class_list":["post-7802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences","category-front-page-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":477,"user_id":266,"is_guest":0,"slug":"bradenstone","display_name":"Braden Stone","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/87df55d0e9221626d0978e57e140dcdacfe284afab3803af66381545a49326d3?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Stone","first_name":"Braden","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/266"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7808,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7802\/revisions\/7808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7802"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}