Have you ever felt as if you were on your way to your execution? Sadly, I have. It was a hot summer day. Already sweating, I walked onto the football field with all my pads in check (which took me thirty minutes to put on) searching for where my team had set up to practice. The huge football field was like an endless desert, while I was a lost traveler trying to find his place. After a long fifteen minutes, I had finally found my team. I nervously croaked out ¨Hello.¨ to my coaches and walked over to the bench where I plopped down and stayed quiet until I was given orders. I had never been more nervous in my whole entire life. “What if i’m not good enough?” “What if they make fun of me?” These awful voices echoed in my head trying to bully me into giving up. But I wouldn’t. And then… The order was given.
¨Stretches!¨ one of the coaches bellowed to the team. A single word. One word that flipped a switch in the brains of the field of eight year old football stars. Almost like robots, my teammates quickly darted into four straight lines. I got up from my bench and hobbled over to the back of one. And then came the second order.
¨Karaoke!¨ he bellowed once more. All of a sudden every line started doing some stretch that look like they were playing hop scotch. Once it was finally my turn to do this mystery drill, I felt everyone's eyes latched onto me. I took a wrong step, yet another wrong step, and then tripped on my own feet. Embarrased, I finished the stretches while trying to keep my face from turning bright red. After an embarrassing ten minutes of stretching, we lined up for our very first contact drill. The whole team formed two lines facing each other. The line I was in was considered the running backs and the one facing me were the linebackers. Naturally, I ended up right in front of the running back line head to head with the biggest, most ruthless kid in the whole league, thirsty for the flesh of Owen Duncan.
The whistle blew...
He ran towards me…
I ran towards him…
This was it, my execution.
And we clashed together like two raging bulls. Except he was a bull and I was a small kitten begging for mercy. Unconscious, I flew up in the air for what felt like a whole five seconds. Eventually crashing down on the hard turf field only to be awoken by one of the coaches. He told me to get up and dragged me over to the side of the drill. He had asked me if I was ok. Full of adrenaline at the moment, I had told him I felt fine and got back in line. About thirty seconds later I had realized what happened, and then the pain kicked into action. Like the young man I was I reacted like anyone else would have in the situation. I sat down and bursted into tears… It wasn’t the best start to my first football practice. As I personally know, many things can go wrong when trying a new sport….
I think I may have done them all.