Reflective Essay: My Experience With Football

Back in my prime days I was the “big man on campus” but before I got there I had to start from the bottom. When I first started playing football I wasn’t a beast right away in fact I could barely run a lap around a track, I was that fat kid in the back huffing and puffing for some air looking like I was about to collapse. But I never quit I worked and hard and kept at it, kept grinding and the improvements I saw were tremendously drastic. The disappointment that fueled this drastic improvements was getting cut from junior varsity. Going into the 9th grade that summer I tried out for junior varsity with the mentality that I would automatically make it, I was sadly mistaken, I made it all the way the finals cuts and the coach called me into his office to tell me that I had been cut down to freshman.

The shock of been cut was so surreal I literally felt as a bullet had pierced my heart; the coach asked if I was okay because he could read the shock expression I had on my face and I said yes. In that moment I realized that I had been kicked off this high pedestal my previous coaches raised me to be on. I quickly humbled myself and eventually went back to the “lab” to work on my craft and perfect my skills. That freshman season went by quick and I performed well and the following offseason, I went to football conditioning almost every day. Even the coaches notice my improvements and told me to keep it up. I was proud of the work I had put in I was seeing results. During the offseason but before summer there was this three day camp called big man camp which was for the linemen, linebackers, and tight ends. I went to this camp and basically my school goes up against other schools; for example my schools football team’s offensive linemen would go up against another schools defensive linemen and so on. I wasn’t really expecting to play because it was our best vs their best. But one of our offensive linemen broke or fracture his wrist, he happened to play left tackle which was the same position I played at the time, I was the next man up. I got thrown into the fire and thought I wouldn’t perform well, but boy was I wrong! Before we even started my teammate said to me you better not fuck up I’m not picking up you fucking slack freshman.

Immediately after him saying that it lit a fire in my stomach to play good. I did extremely well I even got some pancakes which is when you push the opponent on the ground, that same teammate told me good job and so did my coaches. After going against a team called eastern view the coach of that team called me over and told I did well asked me was grade I was in and said I should consider transferring to eastern view. I was excited to here that news maybe I was better than I thought. Big man camp ended and shortly after was the summer which means training camp, this time around I had lowered my expectations to only make junior varsity and bubble on varsity which means I dress out for varsity games and not play, and I met those expectations and exceeded them. During that same training camp I was on junior varsity but practicing strictly with varsity except for the day before the game for junior varsity. I played one game on junior varsity and got moved up to varsity permanently. The only this I missed about junior varsity was the pregame meal which I got twice a week before moving up and how easy practice was. Varsity was a whole other story, the week I got pulled up to varsity one of the starters got hurt and I was his replacement. Mentally I wasn’t ready to play in front of all those people, what if I failed and performed poorly, I knew I had big shoes to fill because our offensive line was top-tier; that whole week in practice I had to practice with the first team and the second team. The offensive line coach put the best defensive line on me because he said I needed more work, I remember being tired and wanting to come out, but the coach said no you need more work stay in and I just kept getting worked by him because he was that good. Finally I was saved by the bell because that period was over and I was able to get some water man I was exhausted I felt as if I was about to collapse and the worst part about it was that practice wasn’t even over we still had to do conditioning, to me at that point varsity exceptionally hard. Suddenly it hit me it was game day, I was extremely nervous feeling as if I was going to puke. It was my first start and I couldn’t think about anything my mind was blank, I only did the task that was at hand. We had just got done with warm ups and it was kickoff, the game was about to begin. My team received the ball and the offensive was about to take the field my heart was racing with excitement and fear all that went away after the first play. The whole game I did fairly well, I even got a pancake the game. The linebacker blitz late and I kept my head on a swivel and picked up the blitz in the process get my first pancake on my first start on varsity, I was hype; it got my blood rushing. After the coach told me good job keep it up. In my opinion I made some mistakes but overall I performed decent. The next game the starter came back from his injury and was still recovering, so that game I didn’t start but I got to play. I guess it was to prevent further injury, but I was happy about getting to play. But I had my downfalls to my sophomore year; for instant I was very inconsistent I one day would play like a stud and the next day play like a bench warmer. One week I was starting due to someone else get hurt, but I played so poorly in practice that I had gotten removed from the starting lineup.

This motivated I to work hard in practice that next week. But I didn’t even get to play because we had all of our starters and probably because it was the last game of the regular season and we lost, but we still made the playoffs. First game of the playoffs was different I could feel it in the atmosphere. I had started for the first quarter because one of our best linemen said some disrespectful to one of the coaches and skipped practice so he was benched. I was getting whooped because I was going against some guy, who now plays at university of Miami and he was scary good. We lost again to the same team we played last week. The season was over I did way better than I thought, but still had a lot of room for improvement. Most of starters where seniors that, so I knew the starting spot was mine to lose. I still went to football conditioning but started to skip on days I didn’t feel like going and my coach would give me a hard time and he had every right to because looking back it now, I was hurting the team and myself by not being there I

wasn’t able to leader and help others, also I was not perfecting my craft, not getting stronger and not working on the little things. That next season was my time to shine and in all honestly I don’t remember much. I do however vividly remember two games where I utterly dominated, the first game I have about four or five pancakes. I performed so well and the other game I literally destroyed my opponent, I had somewhere between seven and ten pancakes and I destroyed was actually the best player I ever went against. He currently plays at Virginia Tech and I had about 5 of those pancakes was on him, also I got my revenge because the first I time I played against him he gave me a rough time. I never had gone against an opponent who got off the ball so fast, his first step was incredible. But I obliterated him that game. Overall I did well my junior season but I was a little disappointed I didn’t 1st or 2nd team all-conference. I didn’t even get honorable mention that motivated me to work even harder for next season, which would be my last high school football season. Senior year I was on a different level, to talk about senior year I would have to type another five pages, so this is all I’m going to say; along with playing offense, I had to play defense because my team need me to and I was even better at that. I played everything on the defensive line, but playing both ways took its toll on me. During and after games I was extreme exhausted. But I knew everything was my last so I left it all out on the field. I’m so serious when I say that for example there was one game where I had a total of 16 tackles in one game but was dead tired. After the season I felt as if I had been snooped of 1st team all-conference for defense and anything team all-conference for offense. I did however make 2nd team all-conference for defense. I just feel like if I had only played offense I would have easily gotten 1st team all-conference, but I look back on the past reminiscing what if I pushed myself harder, what if I worked harder, what if I spent extra time on the weekend perfecting my skills and craft. I will never know I keep telling myself it’s in the past so leave it there, stop pondering on it. The end of the day at least I can say I tried my best.