Personal Narrative : A Personal Experience?

We walked together to the field, the spikes on the bottom of my cleats clicking with each step on the parking lot pavement. A huge field with onlookers filling the bleachers on the far side came into view, lit up by the soft evening light. I spotted the girls on my team and my tired looking grey-haired coach. Me and my dad split up, me going to warm up with my team and my dad going to sit with the team parents. As I was passing with my teammates I watched the opposing team carefully. I observed how neat their drills were and how accurate their shots and passes were. They all looked so athletic and that really made me doubt myself. How was I supposed to prove to everyone that I was a good player if I had to play against a team this good? What if I mess up and the other team completely destroys my team? The loud buzzer that ended the warm ups sounded and both teams went to their side of the field. My coach called today’s starters out, and luckily he didn’t choose me. Relieved, I went to go sit on one of the hard metal chairs they provided for the teams on the sidelines. The chairs were uncomfortable but that didn’t bother me. I had other things on my mind. I sat shivering watching the events of the game

Put the gun down! Put the gun down! Pow Pow Pow. The gun shots cracked into the air as loud as thunder. One after another. We live day by day not knowing our end. In the blink of an eye our lives can be changed forever. Its life, yet even in knowing this we never expect tragedy to find us. We never expect it to affect our lives and the people we know and love. I’m going to share with you the day tragedy found my life.

So I did and got the tackle and we were all pumped. We lined up for defense and since I was a right side linebacker I was told to make sure the running back did not get past me when they snapped the ball I watched and waited. He went left and I had to wait and watch for a reverse and by time I saw there was no reverse our left side linebacker had already tackled the running back. Next play same thing happened then on third down and four yards to go they went right and I was the first one to hit the running back and as I was tackling him our cornerback came up and hit him as well since the ball was wet from rain the running back fumbled and our corner jumped on the ball and it was our ball on the opposite twenty-four yard line. We lined up for offense and I lined up behind the quarterback and was ready to receive the handoff and i got excellent blocking and I ran the ball in to the end zone 8-0 us. Then we ran a quarterback sneak and scored for the two point conversion. The rest of the first quarter was spent alternating between offense and defense. They would get the ball and fumbled, punt it away, turn it over on downs. Then we would get the ball and have to punt it or fumble or turn it over on downs. The first of four eight minute quarters ended with the score still

I began training every single day trying to make sure that this never happened again and that my teammates could count on me every time I went out there. I began training with One On One Kicking as well every other Sunday and they have helped immensely. Over the next 10 months I would train for our first game of the 2016 season against Chancellor High School, our cross town rivals.

It felt as I was walking for the first time again. I felt so unsteady. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know how high my standards were going to be. My first game to start was arguably my worst football game ever played. Over and over, I snapped the ball, threw it to my intended target, and I saw the other team come down with it. Every throw I began trembling. I had anxiety, questioning my future career. This was expected, I had no proper coaching, no fundamental technique, and my genuine mechanics were nonexistent. After those few unforgettable games, I had learned from my mistakes and started my development as a

​The world spun as I got up off the ground, it felt like someone had hit me in the back of the head with a sledge hammer. I knew the play had moved down the field but I could not find it. The seconds seemed to take years to pass me by. I think I spun in a circle three or four times to find the huddle forming around the goal line for the field goal attempt. I half jogged, half stumbled my to the huddle barely keeping myself on my feet. I put my hand in the dirt, and watched the ball sail through the uprights. I miraculously made it back to the sideline, where the trainer could see that I was struggling just to stand. She made me sit on the bench and put me

I recall arriving at the first game. The opposing team, although small, were almost two times my size. They looked intimidating, but I did not let judgement cloud my mind. When huddled together, our coach spoke to us, telling the team that we is what we practiced for, that the other team did not practice as hard as we did, even though he had no knowledge of the opposing team’s practice was. As he continued to intensify our spirits, a fire sparked amongst my companions. The plays flourished throughout my brain. I felt confident. Before I knew it, a whistle blew and I was fast forwarded onto the field

Later in the day, my wife pointed out to me that there was a picture of me in the newspaper, vomiting. When I saw that picture for the first time my stomach turned. I thought I was going to throw up again. It was incredibly humiliating and I knew I couldn’t let the people who looked up to me the most see me like that. Not my teammates, my peers, my wife, my son, nobody. It was pathetic. With that picture out in the media, I was already focused on tomorrow’s practice. I was determined to come back the next day, playing harder than ever, and proving everyone wrong.

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

Everything was gone I went to my parents room and my brothers room and there was nothing there. I just thought they could be playing a trick on me, so I just went to my bedroom and got ready for school, as i walked down stairs and the furniture was all back where it had been the night before. I thought maybe I had just imagined the stuff being gone, so I got breakfast and started walking to school. I went to school and was trying to focus on nothing but the game, but it was hard because of what had happened this morning. It was so strange that one moment everything is gone then the next it’s all there. During PE I talked to my coach about what I had learned the night before from watching the film, I explained to him how the D end on the weak side was slow to react to a read play coming straight at him, and the strong safety liked to blitz around the edge so we could just dump it right were he would have been. He thought that would be a great idea to do if I could audibel into it on the field. To prepare for the game I drank two gallons of water throughout the day. The wait for the game made it seem like it would never come, but I knew when it did I would be ready. I just couldn’t get the thought of what had happened later that morning out of my mind, and I had a head splitting headache. The game was about to start know we were out on the

We decided to pass the ball around to help kill time. I saw many familiar faces many of the girls I grew up playing with on rec leagues were going to tryout. At exactly 5:30 sharp the tryouts commenced. We started with a simple 3 lap jog or so it sounded. At the pace the older girls were taking those three laps they might as well have called it a three lap sprint. After the worst three laps of my life I was drenched in sweat and breathing as heavily as a dog after it chases a squirrel. After we got past the sprinting and stamina part I began to show what I could really do. I tried my hardest on every drill that they had us do so I could ensure myself a spot on the team. After that there was still one day of tryouts that would be the following day. The next day we did mostly the same stuff we had done the day before but you could feel that everyone was trying their best to impress the coaches that were judging us. As the tryouts came to a close I hoped that had done just enough to catch the eye of one of the judges. After the second day of tryouts the coordinators told us that know who did and didn't make the

My teammates and I were all hyped up and ready for this game. Then they call us on the field to warm up. My stomach was everywhere I was really nervous and didn't want to mess up. Many kids on my team felt the same way but once the whistle blew it all went away. The whistle blew and it was game time we were doing good the whole time and had the ball and we scored it happened. We were winning by halftime against the best team.The half time whistle blew and we were up.we knew that now as a team we need to keep it up and not let them

I took off at a sprint towards the ball, I barely got there, but I was able to square up the ball and make a clean field. Then, the last one came, this one came screaming to my right side. Again I took off at a sprint, but I missed the ball with my glove. The ball, slammed into my ankle and bounced in front of me. I quickly picked up the ball with my bare hand and fired it across the field. Mortified I jogged over to the dugout. I felt like crying, there was no way I would make the team now, I thought.

As the second week began with a bang at that monday evening practice we had our first scrimmage against the eighth grade team,they had been unbeaten the year before but the fact of the matter is the had guys that were like 6”1 or taller and our tallest guy was 5”9.He was on the B team!So you could imagine what happened even though the coaches weren’t keeping track our bench warmers were and it was bad.The score was 42-7 by the end of practice.Next few practices were like intese conditioning but I

The coaches brought us all in and we got into a big huddle. They told us what positions we were going to be playing in. He had me starting. Starting forward. I walked onto the field telling myself that I got this and I have to score and put one in for the team. It was mainly up to me to help my team win and I knew I was capable of doing that. “Let’s go girls we