Freshman year. Bottom of the food chain. For me though, the “hazing” doesn’t start on my first day of school. It starts with summer workouts for football. Fresh meat. We just came off a winning season the year before but that was only middle school. The big, bad high school guys don’t care about that at all. It was just middle school anyway. This is high school now. This is the big time. Summer workouts start right at the beginning of June. We don’t get much of a summer break. Luckily my brother was a junior on the team so I didn’t have to find a ride three days a week at 7:30 in the morning to be there by 8. I thought that having my brother on the team might help me out a bit and I wouldn’t be singled out nearly as often as some of the other freshman but I had it completely backwards. Because I was his brother they all knew me so I got chosen to pick up the weights or take care of the tackling dummies or whatever they felt I needed to do to be accepted on the team. Our team has a “No hazing” policy but it doesn’t hold up very well.
Matt never really talked to me though. I mean hell; he never really talked to anybody. He was the biggest guy on the team by about 50 pounds and a senior. Why would he? A good 275 pounds of just about all muscle; or at least it seemed like all muscle. He never smiled either. That was the weird part too. I never saw him. He just lifted, ran his sprints and left without saying a word. Too be completely honest I was a bit scared of him. Given I never really knew him but he was so overwhelming that I didn’t really know what to think.
Finally, the long summer is over and it is time for two-a-days. Let me tell you something right now. Two-a-days suck. After a week of just wearing our helmets we get our pads on and then the real fun starts. Matt obviously plays offensive and defensive line. That’s bad for me because I play running back and linebacker. So you could say that our paths crossed a few times. I...