Never Backing Down: Overcoming Obstacles Analysis

People, especially some of my former teammates, believe that my physical condition deteriorated after I quit. The image of a frail Asian boy that games everyday must mean that I am frail and weak. However, ever since I recovered from my injury, I have put an importance on exercise and my health. Each progressive month I would get a bit stronger and healthier. I challenged myself to break the limit for mile time, push-ups, pull-ups. With this health oriented lifestyle, it wasn't long till I was back in my prime. It was time to challenge myself.

While the students Putnam describes come from a variety of classes, races, and levels of parental involvement, they all had a solid chance to scale the social ladder. One reason that most, if not all, students achieved some level of upward mobility was that they possessed a strong work ethic. For example, on page ten Putnam describes Libby, the daughter of a poorer working-class family with nine siblings. “Academically, Libby’s parents set high expectations for their children, and Libby lived up to them: she was an honors student in the college-prep track.” After high school, Libby served as a strong force in the town’s political system. Her slight increase in social wellbeing was heavily rooted in the fact that she was a hard worker. Another

Reflecting on all the times in my life that I have had to overcome obstacles there is a long list of mishaps, lessons learned and many other adventures. The top one of the list is going through US Navy boot camp, which consisted of basically being torn down and built back up. In short you are told that the way you have always learned things from as early age is the wrong way and there is only one way the Navy way.

Today, I got to workout, observed classes as well as observed an individual and semi-private training session.This morning the sport performance coaches, interns, and I did a trial run of the College Prep workout. This workout was challenging. It had a lot of explosive, strength, and endurance movements combined. During and after this workout, I was fatigued and exhausted. The semi-private training went well. The athletes worked hard. It was great to see the coach working on sport specific movements with the athletes. Both athletes were football players, so the coach worked with them on football specific movements. Next, the Speed and Weights class went well. Both athletes worked hard and the coach did a great job motivating the athletes when

Football is a game of passion, a time when nothing else matters and the only thing that matters is going out there having fun and fighting for the guy next to you. Football has always been something that I loved and had a wild passion for. I’ve made friendships and memories to last a life time and I can always be grateful that football did that for me. Now of course I’ve had some bad memories during football as well, I remember walking out of the film room on the last day of spring ball and having Coach Antle grab me and say “Gage, I think I want to try you at a new position, I want to put you at defensive end. We need you more there and we think you can really excel there.” I remember being so furious, I had played linebacker ever since I could remember and now the last day of spring ball my senior year everything was about to change.

Glaring upwards at the inclination of the slope I consistently question whether I could make it another step further. The trail conditions were not exceptional. The ground was so slick that every step you take you would slide back half a step. Swirling through my head thoughts like “THEY SAID THIS WOULD BE AN EASY BOOT PATH NOT A PRATICALLY OFF TRAIL ROUTE CLIMBING THIS STUPID MUDDY FACE!!!!”. I withheld my smoldering frustration inside and trotted up with an unpleasant and desperate gait. Over and over the climb leader yelled a Jens Voigt (Professional Cyclist) quote “Shut Up Legs! And do what I tell you.” in the most preposterous German accent. Time passed by in insignificant increments as I seemed to only scramble fifty more feet upwards.

My goals are to pass all my classes of at least a 3.5 GPA, study at least 2 hours a day, and to show up to class everyday as possible. I think the biggest barrier is time and the reasoning for that is because you have to make a schedule of when you’re going to study and when to go to bed, so you’ll wake up on time to class. My biggest challenge is procrastination. This is true because I say I’m going to work on it the next day, but I usually don’t and I wait to the last-minute. I assume that I always have the time to work on it later, but end up doing it the day before the assignment is due. My biggest strength is paying attention and writing notes. I say this because I was always taught by my parents, if you pay attention and write notes,

“If you can’t fly, then run, if you can’t run, then walk, if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward”, a renowned statement by Martin Luther King expressing his notion of perseverance. This quote is suitable for all individuals. Upon reflection many of us here today, can relate to this idea to persist and to not stand still as we are faced with obstacles. Personally, myself and family have been faced with hardships, and at times it was difficult to proceed. We have two options: to surrender, and subsist, or to persevere, and truly succeed.

Many young men play football in their lives, and they have a good time doing it. Many may think that it is a mindless game of hitting other teams and scoring touchdowns, but much deeper lessons can be found. Some argue that football can transform boys to men. There is no doubt that a special bond is shared among a football team, and that there are lessons learned on the football field that cannot be taught anywhere else. Standing up for those that are close to you and never giving up are important life lessons that are conveyed through the sport. It is truly a unique experience, an experience that provides lessons of the highest value. Football is a life learning experience, learning teamwork, determination, perseverance, and the meaning of family outside of

We all have obstacles we have overcome in our lives and still need to down the road. The quote from philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzche, “What does not kill me makes me stronger” (Nietzche, 1888) states that it is in the event or challenge that strengthens the individual, but research points more to the role of individual responses. Another statement in the article is “Approaching life’s challenges in a positive, optimistic way by demonstrating self-control stamina and good character with your choices and actions” (Hefferon & Boniwell, 2011). I’ve always heard that saying what does not kill me makes me stronger. I believe that saying because all hardships we go through in life makes us wiser and stronger. We learn from the obstacles we overcame

For a lot of kids, it’s not until it’s all said and done, and they look back on it several years later, that they realize the difference the sport made in their lives. They are proud of playing the game. Have you ever met anybody who accomplished playing four years of high school football, and at the end of that run said, ‘Man, I wish I wouldn’t have played’? It doesn’t get said. Football players aren’t perfect. Nobody is. But millions of former players, one by one, can recount the life-altering principles they learned from football. They know the value of football is the values in football.That’s why high school football – and particularly high school coaches – play such a vital role in our society. Our football coaches are on the front lines of the battle for the hearts and minds of the boys in our society.

Someone once said “Do what is right, not what is easy.” This quote means that when you do something that is harder than what you normally do you could possibly learn something new. When you learn things like maybe rocket science or a sport that you never thought you would good at you could start a whole new chapter in your life.

The summer before my junior year, I worked harder than I ever had to train for my first varsity season. Immediately after an intense run, I would go home and ice my ankle to relieve the pain that I ignored during the workout itself. “Push through;” I would tell myself, “be strong!” I thought that I was being strong by working through the pain. Sports media always praises the athletes who played the championship game on a broken foot or a sprained ankle, but you never hear about the kid who trains through the everlasting two-a-days of preseason and never makes it to the first game. I thought that by pushing

When I entered freshman year at Sacred Heart Cathedral, I knew that I wanted to try and experiment with things I had never done before. Something I had always had an interest in was playing football. All the movies and stories portray football a great to build a brotherhood with your teammates, and I liked that. The whole idea of playing as one team with a common goal to succeed sounded great to me. In the past, I had played many other team sports like soccer, baseball, and basketball, but I always had the idea that football was the ultimate team sport. You must rely on and have complete trust in your ten other teammates who are out on the field with you. Football really emphasizes the, “There’s no I in team” saying. All these ideas made me want to start playing football greatly, but there were some hesitations.

For as long as I can remember football has been a part of my life in some way, shape, or form. When I was first born my grandfather said that I was solid and built to play football. I used to throw the football with my mother when I was a toddler and she always told me that when I tried to tackle her I hit really hard. My first organized football experience was when I was five. I had just moved to Manassas, VA from Washington, D.C. in 1994. It was around fall and that was right at the beginning of football season in the area. I remember telling my mother that I wanted to play, so she looked for a local organization for children. She came across the Greater Manassas Football League (GMFL) and that is where I began to play the game I