For the holidays, recognize UCLA's divine influence: soccer!
Donald Carpenter-Rios
It's the holiday season, and my favorite time of year. This is when we all gather 'round our favorite mythology to celebrate what was originally the end of the long nights, cold days, and little food.
Yes ma'am, the celebration of the Winter Solstice is what it's all about. But no matter how you celebrate it, this is undeniably a season of the miraculous. In the Christian tradition, God assumed the form of a human baby on earth. In the Jewish tradition, oil meant to light the Temple's menorah for only one day, burned brightly for eight.
Miracles abound, and UCLA is at no shortage for the influence of the Divine.
It is a strange phenomenon that most encounters with the Divine, the things that could really prove we're not alone, particularly on a grand universal scale, only occur in the most obscure remote corners of the world or somewhere deep within the human heart. No exception was underway in the mind of God last Sunday, either. For last Sunday the gods came down and performed one of the greatest miracles ever seen at a UCLA soccer game, or anywhere else, for that matter. It was a game of transcendental proportions, and like most inexplicable mysteries of the cosmic realm, it was not witnessed by many.
But those of us who had ears to hear and eyes to see will never forget that fateful day. Those of us who, by no human intention, were called to witness with our very existence the spectacle before us, comprise the chosen few left behind to tell the tale, to testify to the world.
This is my purpose here, right now. No, brother, I'm not trying to convert you to my way of believing, I'm telling you of the truth I saw. Now that I have the truth, I'm sharing it with you. It started out as most UCLA soccer games do, Coke in one hand, big pretzel in the other, UCLA looking extremely viable with a one point lead.
Charleston was no pushover (I guess you don't get to play for a slot in the NCAA final four without being rather good). But then it happened. With a sacrifice play that would cost Chris Snitko dearly, this awesome wonder boy of a goalie leaped through the air with mercurial agility and blocked a ball outside of the 18-yard line.
What else could he do? The ball had been headed back out to a Charleston player with a clear shot on goal. Instinctively, Snitko blocked the ball. Instantly, he was ejected from the game. "Oh my God!" I thought, "they have to play Matt Reis. He's only a FRESHMAN!!!!!"
It was at that moment I realized I had dropped my pretzel and had chewed the stick off my yellow pompom. That was okay. I still had the blue one.
The Charleston team, eager to test Reis early, made several drives to the net. With a shot on goal and Reis diving to the ground, the ball popped into the path of a Charleston hot foot. Frankie Hejduk jumped in front of the ball, batting it down with his hand. Immediately he too was red-carded. "Oh my god!" I screamed.
Indeed, it was time to invoke the Divine.There I was foaming pale blue from the mouth, my heart pounding, nearly beating the woman in front of me to death with what was left of my yellow pompom, and it hit me. "Where's the blue pompom?"
We were down two men! UCLA was playing this game, headed for the national championship playoffs, with only nine players on the field against Charleston's eleven. Let's imagine playing b-ball without the O'Bannon brothers and no substitutes. Let's imagine UCLA football without J.J. Stokes and Wayne Cook, and no substitutions ... exactly!
But that's where faith comes in. It reminded me of a Bible story I heard when I was a boy. There was this war between Israel and Syria (geez, a few thousand years and things don't change much).
Anyway, Elisha was watching the battlefield with his servant and they were completely outnumbered. The worried servant says "we're surrounded," and Elisha says "Fear not, for they that are with us are more than they that be with them." And I'm sure that was not much consolation, so Elisha prays for this guy's eyes to be opened. What does he see? "And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw: and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."
That was the only explanation for what happened the soccer field last Sunday. Man, those horses and chariots did burn! That and the fact that UCLA has one of the best teams in the nation.
You've got Ante Rasov, who executes a flying bicycle kick so perfectly it's enough to give Jean-Claude Van Damme nightmares. You've got Greg "the animal" Vanney who has scored impossible goals in the last seconds of his last two games "by any means necessary," and I think he'd drag the ball into the net by his teeth if they gave him the go-ahead.
Well, our mens' soccer team received the grace of God last Sunday and proved that "they that are with us are more than they that are with them" by winning that game three to two. Might I remind you that they did that with only nine players against 11? Now that I have witnessed the glory of the miraculous, I'm here to say these guys are riding a chariot of fire all the way to the NCAA championship.
It would be nice if the Daily Bruin (a paper that will give a full color spread to a less than spectacular football team and front page coverage to the UCLA men's basketball win over Kentucky) would avoid further sacrilege and scandal, in this the year of soccer's advent in the U.S. (remember the World Cup?) and pay homage to the men's soccer team, who are only two games away from the National Title.
Come on, Bruins, give our brothers out on the soccer field the love they deserve. They're doing nothing by miracles.
Donald Francis Carpenter-Rios is a graduate student in Near Eastern Language and Cultures and has not written this article just because his advisor is a raging soccer fan and he wants a better grade.