Personal Narrative: A Career In American Football

I enjoyed playing on Friday nights, as the hometown crowd would be cheering us on, I played both offensive and defensive lineman. Not to brag, I was pretty good at my position. . I would be all over the field. As I was running, my chest began to hurt because of my choices in the past. The more I ran

It was just another school night in the seventh grade. Our recreational tackle football team had a practice at 730pm until 9. It was a very swampy night and from that I felt myself very sluggish. At the time, I was a backup running back. I was always left on the sidelines facing the chills of the cold wind during games. I typically didn’t get to see much playing time on the field, but that night I got my opportunity. I was receiving kicks during a punting audition and all I was doing was catching the ball and throwing it back, nothing unique. One throw after another, my coach began to praise my arm strength. Seeing me pass the ball was a true eye-opener. That night, I went from a backup running back, to the starting quarterback of my rec

Nothing means more to me than spending quality time on Sundays with my family, sitting on the couch and watching football. Even as a young kid, before I knew the names of the teams my Dad would say, “We’re rooting for the blue team!” I had no idea what was going on but I was so interested by the game that I would cheer and yell whenever my Dad would. This natural attention to this great game gave me the desire to prepare myself to eventually join a team. I learned how to motivate myself to workout, study plays and annoy my Dad enough to throw a ball with me in the backyard. I felt it was my purpose in life to become a professional and play football as

Football is back as the first preseason game was played last Thursday. With football coming back, so does fantasy football. Like a lot of people (myself included), you’re scouring the internet for rankings. There’s plenty of rankings out there, but none of them tell you where to take a defense. I am going to present my strategy.

This is probably the most popular and used play in football. This play requires that the running back runs off the outside hip of the tackle.

I was an incoming freshman, two weeks prior to my first day of high school, and I was terrified. I knew that I loved the sport of football, however I had heard stories from my brother about how tough Stepinac’s freshman football coach was. Everything that I was told was true. One of the coaches great lessons that he taught me was that a hardworking disciplined team is typically more successful than a team that has all of the talent in the world, but is not disciplined and does not work hard. That summer was the hardest that I had ever worked up to that point to start in a football game. The hard work never paid off, and I left at the end of that season defeated. I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t fast enough, and I wasn’t strong enough. I had only played in two of the games, one, for a snap when

“Fumble! There goes Salem’s number 69, Jonathan Haddad with the football, he’s home free!” I recall the PA announcer. That specific moment was probably the most memorable highlight of my high school football career. Seconds later, my football career would come to an end as the opposing running back lunged at my ankle and I felt a snap and crackling sensation, causing me to immediately fall to the turf. Turns out I broke my ankle and that it would take months to recover before I could even walk. Frustration, anger, and denial were the main things on my mind during those few months. I thought about how hard I worked in the summer; busting my butt to get ready for the season, and wasting a ton of time and money on something that would end in an utter failure.

We left Garberville, CA at 5 a.m. We knew it would be a long haul ahead of us. I slept on the floorboard of the back seat of Holly’s truck for the first couple of hours. Holly was a funny outgoing and straight to the point person. Along with us were my Mom and Dad, Dylan(Holly’s husband) and there two kids Ashley and Clayton. Dylan was a tall red head that is always the life of the party. Ashley was a short dirty blonde girl that loves her horses. And Clayton, clayton was just like his dad a big built red hair with blue eyes and super outgoing. Finally were my parents. My Mom and Dad we both very active outgoing people who got along great with Dylan and Holly and their kids so we knew it was going to be a fun week in Winnemucca. We

I could hear it, the bell, signaling a touchdown. Except this time it wasn’t one of my teammates, it was me. Oh how I had dreamt about hearing that bell it was the ultimate sensory experience. I knew at that moment that there was a reason you never stopped believing you could do something.

The next games went by so fast it was October now a month or so left in my high school football career. Just very infuriated at this moment feeling pathetic, since the back therapy I was going threw was almost over. I had a feeling that nothing was going same again this season our record was now 8-0, still not satisfied. Because we only had two games left in regular season and they were against central catholic on Oct,24th 2014 varsity football team lost Friday's home conference game against Central Catholic (Toledo, OH) by a score of 56-33. Now one more game we were 8-1, I was finally done with my physical rehab it was about time missing 8 games total.

Football was something I did to challenge myself. I was always the smarter kid in school, and never was challenged much so I wanted to try something different. The first year I played I was in the 4th grade. I went out thinking that it was gonna be easy like school was. I was shocked to see how wrong I was. The coaches seemed like monsters for the things we had to do. Continuous running, drills, and screaming  made the field seem like hell. After my first practice my

This wasn’t just your typical football practice before your first game, this was trying to get everyone hyped after a rather laid back Monday practice. This was a more competitive practice than usual, trying to get everyone motivated for the first game against Clarksburg. Coach Song thought it would be a good a time to divide everyone up into teams, Team Zuckerman and Team Johnson. The teams were named after our running back and myself, who were voted team captains. In between drills we would have little competitions between both teams to try to bring a competitive edge for everyone to get excited for practice. Emotions were at an all-time high because Coach Song had yelled at us after the first practice to get us excited to on

My adrenaline coursed through my body and my nerves were at an all time high as I was finally getting to play in my first game as a Varsity Wildcat. All my hard work had led up to this moment and there was no way I was going to mess it up. The all too familiar smell of the fresh cut grass made me feel comfortable at that moment and I lined up as the strong side linebacker and got ready for the play to start. Steam filled my helmet and my breathing got gradually quicker and quicker. The quarterback hiked the ball and I knew exactly what play they were running. I threw myself into the gap I needed to and made the tackle, but as I headed to the ground there was a violent crackling in my right knee. The whistle blew again and I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t. A flurry of emotions flooded my brain: fear, anxiety, pain, sadness, regret. When the trainer got me to the bench to see what had gone, wrong he determined that I had torn my Meniscus and I would be out for the season. All my effort on the difficult, hot, summer practice all nulled from this one moment. All my aspirations of

Beep beep beep! I turn off the Love/Hate machine we call an alarm clock. I put on my away colored football jersey; I get a little ball of excitement and eagerness bouncing around in my body. I run up stairs to get ready for school as I smell the aroma of bacon wafting in the area. I walked out my front door as the cool fall morning air hits my body. I open the wet car door handle to get into my car; I plop on the chilly leather seats, plug the aux cord into my phone and turn on some rap to set the day’s mode. I leave the driveway zooming out with my subwoofers rattling my cars. It’s Friday morning, and that means tonight is Friday morning and that means a long day until Friday night football.

How much I knew about this subject before I started it was little to nothing. I had to start from ground zero and work my way up, because what I knew was that they had to come up with game plans and have a set defensive. What I have learn that you have to know more than the blind eye. You have to always expect what they can do to your team, and counter everything they got to score on you.