3rd Round Playoffs
The last words I remember my coach saying to me and my team mates as we left the field was, “Make sure you wear your cup next game.” This would be the first time the Kendrick Middle School Football Program has ever made it past the first round in the playoffs. So the coaching staff was taking this next game very seriously like it’s our last. Since we have been in the playoffs, our practices have felt like we were in basic training for the Marine Corps. Everything is more intense and fast paced. There is no more room for error and the coaches’ tempers seem to be red hot like a radiator cap. When I came from practice the little bit of life I have left in me is used to shower up and eat just so I can go to sleep. Laying in my bed, my body feels as if I’m an eighty year old man with shingles and arthritis in my knees.
I remember that day like it was yesterday. We all walked down the hall towards the locker room, as if we were about to gear up and hit the front lines in Iraq. Usually we would goof off and play around like school girls in the locker room before games, but not today. We all came in with pride and determination in all of our hearts. As I prepared myself for the task at hand. I remember looking over at the quarterback, sitting down in the corner next to his locker. I could sense the pressure he was under and how nervous he was. I simply looked over at him as he looked at me and said “Its game time lets go get this W.” Before I leave the locker room I always had a routine of saying a prayer alone to myself before I head to the field. With my head hung low like deacon in church I whispered aloud a little prayer for me and my team mate’s safety tonight.
As I walked towards the old equipment room that looks as if it has been standing here before the school was even built. The lights shine on me very dim and gloomy. My coaches used to crack jokes about me every game, because I have to get tapped up like a zombie...