See you after work

Last week, I played futsal three days in a row. The next day, I felt I absolutely wouldn’t be able to get up, so I took a day off. When I told a teammate, the reply came back: “Is that…did something change?”

Until two years ago, I couldn’t even imagine myself kicking a ball on the grass. I disliked bumping into people and didn’t care about winning or losing. I repeatedly turned down a senior on the company futsal team who suggested, “Just come out to the futsal court once.” Instead, I continued my solitary practice at a yoga studio.

But before I knew it, the me who used to move alone within the confines of a mat is now jostling with people and running on a futsal court. I’m always sporting bruises without knowing when or whom I ran into. When yoga practice ended, I would offer a barely audible ‘Namaste’ to the person next to me, but now I shout at my teammates, “The defense is open!” “Hey! (I’m over here!)”. This version of me feels unfamiliar.

I’m playing on a team formed with colleagues who were taking futsal lessons together. Our practice proof shot.

It all started with one video. In early summer 2024, a post titled ‘This is the video from the Journalists Association women’s futsal tournament’ went up on the company bulletin board. It was a video featuring our in-house futsal team that had made its first appearance at the Korea Journalists Association Women’s Futsal Tournament. In the video, the Kyunghyang Shinmun futsal team ‘KHFS’ met the powerhouse Yonhap News in the first round after intense training and lost 30. Seniors and juniors alike wore expressions I’d never seen beforehollow, indignant, aggrieved…a few shed tears. I was curious. What was this futsal, after all.

That fall, pretending I couldn’t help it, I went out to a futsal practice. There was no way I made a single decent pass or controlled the ball properly. It would have been easy to give up in advance, but jealousy and grit took over. That very day I signed up for futsal lessons. On weekend mornings I went to the company futsal team’s practice, and on weekday evenings I took futsal lessons. The upside of being a beginner is that you can only get betterthere’s no room to get worse.

Before a match at last fall’s Journalists Association futsal tournament, Kyunghyang Shinmun’s futsal team KHFS cheered each other on.

Futsal was nothing like the activities I had been doingyoga, hiking, and running. It was loud and rough. I had to shout to ask for a pass because I was open, to ask for help because there was no defense. To get past defenders and advance where I wanted, and to stop opponents trying to advance, I also had to engage in physical battles.

One day, seeing how the beginner trainees tried not to let their bodies touch as if a barrier had been set, the coach had us practice bumping and pushing each other. He also told us that on a futsal court you have to move while making loud ‘calls’ to each other. Strangely, every time I tried it, I felt a sense of liberation. Since then, more than my dribbling·passing·kicking, my abilities at body contact and shouting have improved rapidly.

There’s a lot of physical contact in futsal.

I play futsal in a rough and noisy way. My competitiveness, newly awakened and not yet socialized, runs wild. As soon as I leave the court, I start reflecting. I’m sorry for speaking so harshly earlier. Are you okay where we bumped? Thanks to teammates who forgive me every time, I’ll be kicking the ball again this weekend.

Last year, Kyunghyang Shinmun entered the Journalists Association futsal tournament again and met News1winners of the previous tournament two years in a rowin the first round, losing 20. This spring, we faced Financial News in their debut appearance and won 20. I cried at the after-party that day, too.

Ant

Reporter on the Policy and Society desk. An (ex) INFP turned ENTP from playing futsal