The soccer ball sliced through the air, dipping and diving as the crowd watched silently, all their hopes and dreams resting on this one free kick that would determine the whole season; incidentally the player had taken this exact kick thousands of times in practice but this time the ball curved like never before as it grazed the goalies outstretched fingers, knocked off the post and eventually rested in the back of the net as thousands of fans flooded the field in celebration of the United States’ first World Cup victory.
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This sentence is very clever because it is arranged in such a way that the reader is taken on an emotional journey of hope, suspense, fear, and, finally, triumph through its words. First, we are basically holding our breaths along with the audience in the stadium, wondering as we read what the outcome will be. When the author talks about the player having taken the kick many times before my immediate first reaction and thought was that, even though the player has easily completed the kick in the past, this time -- because of pressure or whatever else -- he (or she) was going to mess it up. Gratification doesn’t come right away, either, because the writer refers to how the ball reaches the goalie, and then the post – still leaving room for failure – before we are finally told that the kick has turned into a goal, and not just any goal, but the one to win the US their very first World-Cup Championship. The author could have begun this sentence with the announcement of the victory, but instead, they logically chose to structure it so that that particular detail was at the very end, thereby making the read intense, suspenseful and exciting. I really enjoy the use of alliteration several times throughout the sentence – with words like “dipping and diving”, “grazed the goalies” and “fans flooded the field” -- contributing to a truly delightful sensory experience for the reader. I think the sentence is pretty grammatically sound, except while reading it, it sounded as if there were a few commas missing – maybe after “incidentally”, “practice” and “but”.
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