Written by our January 2024 Alumni: Sarah Young
Growing up, I played soccer, or, as I am growing accustomed to saying after living in Europe for a few years, football. What started as a weekly game in a little league at the local park district grew into 6x a week practices, tournaments out of state, and countless sprints after poor game performance by our team. By the time I reached high school, soccer had become an activity I dreaded, so after I quit at age 17, I had scarcely touched a ball since.
Last year, I saw an ad on social media for Roving Cobras, an organization in Prague promising a safe and fun space to play football with other women. Intrigued by this opportunity to rediscover soccer as an adult, I sent the link to my roommate, and together we signed up for our first practice.
While I was a bit nervous to be entering a new community space and feared that a decade of not playing the sport would be a hindrance, once we began our first drill, I felt back at home. That initial practice turned into more and more training sessions, and now my roommate and I both play on teams for Roving Cobras in a local league—in our first match against each other, our teams tied, so more intense training has, of course, ensued.
Roving Cobras has become a wonderful place to connect with other women of all ages living in Prague from all across the globe, from Russia to Syria to the UK to Japan. After practices or games, we often chat over a coffee or beer, and the Telegram chat is constantly buzzing with invitations to attend events together. The girls on the team are also incredibly supportive of each other: pitching in to buy birthday gifts for teammates, buying a practice session package for a teammate after she lost her job, and showing up for each other in non-soccer-related events. Each week, I look forward to our training sessions and games, far from my teenage days of hoping for rain so my practice would be cancelled. I am so glad that I came across that ad and took a chance by signing up!
So, if you move abroad and are looking for a place to find a community, why not tap back into a childhood hobby? You’ll likely find joy reconnecting with that part of yourself while also making new friends.
Join an upcoming TEFL course where in just 4 weeks you can be teaching in Prague and finding your own community!
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