Grade 8 student Aral A. comes from Türkiye, and he tells his story of how he got into football at a very young age, how he quit for a while, but got back into it.
What follows is Aral’s story, in his own words:
I got into football when I was quite young. I was watching a football game with my family from Türkiye, and I really liked the way it was, and I really wanted to be like [the players] when I grow up. So I asked my Dad what it was, and he said it was football, and then I slowly started getting into it and started playing in my local field. And I was just a baby, I was playing with my Dad so I couldn’t really, like, shoot a ball or anything. But now I can I feel like my skills have really developed from the past and I can really do so good now.
So, this one time me and my cousin [age 22 years old] were playing football; we were playing Brazilian; then these other kids decided to come along and we played football together ’cause we were actually on a football field. My cousin played for an academy, so me and my cousin, we got the ball and it was us against versus, I think, five of them. And since we were very close we could pass around very good and we could score a lot of goals, which we did, and then we beat the kids like I want to say five—zero. And it was a very good victory for us and it boosted my confidence because at the time I was feeling very unconfident.
I have traveled to play football for the school two times in two years. In one I traveled to Tbilisi, Georgia, where we went to the International School of Tbilisi. And then in the second one, we went to, well, ironically we went to AISB, but in Budapest; we went to Budapest, and I played with the Vampires there. I’ve been playing since I was in third grade because even though I started watching when I was two years old, I quit for a bit to play some basketball. But I didn’t really get into basketball that much so I continued playing football in third grade, after I quit basketball.
Some other interests I have are, I like playing video games a lot, it is really, really fun and a good way to spend my time. Also I like reading books, because honestly it’s like watching TV but you can create a visual image in your head all while getting information from the text which you can apply into your English and Humanities classes to get high grades for a good future.