A Stormy Saturday.
Well, it is not stormy yet but you can feel it coming in. There are momentary breaks of sun through the thick clouds, the wind ramps up quickly spiraling in the neighbors yard outside the window to my right. It is days like this I wonder if I would have survived had we not opened the living room up for more light. I will come back to this another time. I have been thinking a lot lately about life lessons I have learned. I think one moment in my life that molded me into a young man is when I learned that there are NEVER fairytale endings in life. The spotlight is on us. Going into my senior year of high school, the varsity football team spent the off-season being projected as one of the best teams in Section V at the time and the other - well, the story starts with them and also ends with them. Training camp session after training camp session I worked as hard as the next guy and I was only a back-up receiver. We began to grow closer through the season, we were winning games at large, and I was seeing more field time than I imagined I would. I was living my dreams and some of my best friends were around me. We finished the regular season undefeated. I won’t ever forget the electricity in practice the week before sectionals started. I played in two sectionals games, my defining moment to myself wasn’t the touchdown I scored the year before but in the second game when I got bowled over by someone the other team. We were away from the play, I set my feet and set up the block. The play whistled dead and at the exact moment I get run over by the guy I knew was going to be coming in for the block. I peeled myself up off the ground and went right back for another play. This time the run came my way and I blocked the same kid for my team to pick up some yardage. But hell - this story is NOT about me. It is sectional finals the stadium is filled on both sides for both teams. This is the match-up every one predicted in the beginning of the season. Halftime: We go into the trailer ahead by three scores. There was a weird feeling in the air that we could tell we were out of gas and they were just getting going. The tied the game with a couple minutes left in the game. It was a back and forth battle while no one picked up a first down for a possession. Your best friend tells you “we’ve got this, don’t you worry” with his arm heavily rested across your shoulders. The time is ticking down.
They intercept the ball and are already in field goal range. In the moment it seems as though everything is in slow motion, your eyes jump from person to person reading their emotions. 5 seconds, 4 seconds. Time-out. As they set up for the field goal you could see the fans emptying out from our side. Players burst into tears. I turn to my two friends and we all sobbed, my best friend hugging me tight. The senior quarterback crying, the senior running back crying, this was the moment we were all there for. We had to watch them raise our trophy. Those countless hours in a gym, on a field, pushing sleds, winning games all season, all they mean is second place. For me it meant: Because I was small. Because I was born female. Because my mom took years of convincing to let me play football... This was my only year on the varsity team. The two before and one after were all championship seasons. I missed out on that feeling. But I learned a valuable life lesson. Sometimes no matter how hard you try, you are going to lose. And sometimes it won’t be a game but failure is failure. The first time you feel true disappointment you learn from it. Go into everything you do with the same fervor but never let yourself feel as low as that first time. There is something to learn in each experience so the sooner you focus on the learning lesson the sooner you grow.