Personal Narrative: Growing Up In The Big Blue Team

Leadership is a key role in all team sports, if you don’t have the leadership odds are is that your not going to have good team chemistry and not an very good season as well. My junior year was a big time learning curve for myself, which is why I am writing this essay to you, to tell you why I believe that I am part of the cream of the crop for our football program.

When I walked in today, some of the children were sitting on the floor and some were trying to play with the toys. As soon as I walked in Faith said hi to me and told me that we were going to go bowling and play bean bag toss after circle time. I sat with her and talked about what she did today, while we waited for the other big kids to come in. When circle time began Faith sat quietly on the rug. She did not sing along, but observed everyone else. She also didn’t do the hand motions besides for the weekday song. When Shalyn passed out the balloons Faith told me that she loves purple and really wanted to get the color purple. She waited her turn patiently and was just as excited to get the color blue. When it was time for her to get up and

Shifting in my heavy metal cleats, I can feel countless sets of eyes trained on me, observing my every move from their hard stadium seats. Normally when I’m on the mound, I have ice in my veins; the stares of the crowd bounce right off. However, this wasn’t a normal day. Instead of standing on the rubber to fire fastballs at opposing batters, I was there to honor two very special ladies and to raise funds and awareness for a cause that hits very close to home, Multiple Sclerosis. During this part of the ceremony, a fellow teammate and I were supposed to present our mothers, who are fighting the disease, with a gift from the team. Unfortunately, this did not occur as smoothly as one would hope. With slick palms, I calmly approached her with

“Jack wake up tryouts for the gators are in 3 hours and you need to get ready.”My mom yells as I jump out of bed and get dressed.

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

A senior linebacker I had been playing behind acted as a mentor and helped me with whatever I struggled with. Everything was different on varsity: practices were stricter, games were more competitive, and everyone wanted a starting spot desperately. After my injury I came to practice and tried to support my team and do anything I could to make them better. However, every second I stood on that sideline was a second I prayed I could still be playing. This sense of emptiness fueled me to work harder at everything I did. I hit the weight room as much as I could so I would be less behind in my next season, I started running as soon as my doctor allowed me, and I kept my grades up and studied to set a good example for my team and ensure I would have no problems next

The environment I grew up in was really involved around spending time with my family and friends and being apart of sports teams and organizations. I love nothing more than being able to hang out with my friends and just having a great time laughing together and being ourselves. I have friends that I have been friends with ever since the first grade that I can truly call my brothers and that will be at my wedding when I get married, be there when I have my first child, and be there when my parents pass. A lot of these unbreakable bonds have come through and started with sports. My family and me are constantly watching sports and talking about new things going on in the sports world. My little brother, Cameron, and I have now won state

We went to NAU football camp, and I showed the Coaches my strengths and weaknesses. I was being very belligerent and tough not letting any of the older guys try to boss me around. After being scrutinized by the coaches for three days, I assume they came to the conclusion that I would be a good help to the line. I was preparing to be the center. I had never really snapped a ball or paid indepth attention to it. The first time I was asked to snap the ball I was kinda scared and had butterflies in my stomach. I gripped the ball warily and prepare to snap it to our quarter back Matt. It flew back perfectly and it felt so natural to me. I had strong legs and squatting into my stance wasn’t a problem for me, like it was for others.

The majority of my seventeen years of life has revolved around the game of football, and moving. With my dad being a football coach, I have literally lived what many songs, movies and people believe and interpret as “Friday Night Lights”; where there is the notion that the entire town is immersed in football fever and every single person consistently supports their hometown team. I too have been consumed by this feeling, and I have just as much hometown pride as the next person, but in actuality I am in fact just a bystander, an outsider, who is only a part of the football revelry as a result of my dad and his profession. I believe I have been blessed. I have experienced things others may never have an opportunity to, such as running out of the stadium tunnel surrounded by the smoke of the fog machine and the players, riding the bus to the game on a Friday night with the athletic trainers, standing on the sidelines during a game and being a ball girl, spending time with players who actually do grow up to play professional football, observing the coaches firsthand and learning how to be passionate about what you do for a living, and how just one person or one situation can have an impact on a person’s life. I have countless wonderful memories of the people I have met and places I have been that have helped shape who I am and who I

I had always been told my entire life that I should play football. Always the biggest kid in all of my classes. People would ask me all the time what position I played, I had no idea what they were talking about and they were always surprised when I told them that I had never played football, and that I had never planned to. But the older, bigger, and stronger I got and the more encouragement I got, finally I decided to play my sophomore year of highschool. There was one game I will always remember that really kick started my love and passion for the game.

When I was younger around the age of 8-10. I think it was an a saturday and I was playing pokemon on my silver Gameboy. Mom then came in the room and explain to me that we were going to my grandma Agar’s house to go swim in their huge clear cold water pool and eat at favorable cook out. But my mom also said I had to keep my Gameboy trapped at home, that broke my tiny heart . So we arrive at my grandparents big white house, I also see all of my family and my grandparents eyes as they followed our car while pulling into the large drive in.

Summer of 2016 was a very interesting time for me. It was the start of the first serious relationship I had and lead to the intro to new people into my life who would end up becoming some of my best friends. We had summer workouts for hockey and it was every day of the week besides weekends. Except it was Caledonia mixed with Kentwood, our rivals. There was only 4 people from Caledonia and 17 from Kentwood, the Cal kids were me, Davis Ziesmer, Hunter Fridley, and Nolan Lockhart. I had no idea who Davis and Hunter were, but I knew who Nolan was because I had previously played with him on a hockey team. From what I knew, Hunter was a jerk at school, and Davis was nice and innocent, and toward the end of the summer my girlfriend had broken up

Over this past year of my life, I have learned an incredibly important life lesson. Life is short. It sounds cliche, but I have discovered that this truth is the most important thing that one can uncover. Life is too short to waste it spending all your time doing something that you don't truly love. From my entire life leading up to my junior year, I had always played football, and that's what I was known for. If asked, all of my friends and family would associate me with one word: football. Because of this going on for so long, I didn't even think about signing up for football anymore, it became automatic for me to spend almost every fall and winter afternoon either practicing or playing in games. This continued all throughout junior high and halfway through high school until I came to a quintessential realization. All that time I was spending at football, I was wishing I was somewhere else.

When it was your first time doing something and you said to yourself, ‘’I wish I could do this for the rest of my life? ’’ I’ve grown up doing the thing I’ve been wanting to do, which is playing professional football for the NFL. I’ve been playing football since kindergarten, since then I know the game perfectly. My first year of kindergarten sparked me to be interested in football.

2 years ago I played football for the MOT Cowboys, I had just turned thirteen. Football season had just started and there were many teenagers my size and smaller than me trying out for the team,the tryouts was about a week long, a week later the teams had decided who they wanted and I was picked along with a ton of other talented kids at football. August 4th, the first day of conditioning, I’m thinking that conditioning would be a piece of cake but surely I was mistaken. The first day I had ran like I have never ran before, after the first practice I was thinking and said “ What did I get myself into”. The first week I was skeptical about even wanting to play football, my brother played football to and he jokingly said to me, “ You look like