Lessons in Football
Through my many years in sports I have learned a lot, but only one has helped me with life. Football players use the phrase football equals life and life equals football.
This is true in that football is one of the only sports to teach a lot of the skills and required attitudes for the “real world”. For me football has taught me teamwork, how to help people (not just on the team, but in the community), hard work, how to deal with adversity, and how easy we have it compared to others in the world.
Team work is one of the most important parts of life to me because our country is run by team work. The game can’t be played without it. My varsity coach once said “#1 doesn’t mean anything unless you win.” He said this because a kid on another team wanted to be all state runningback and he was #1, but his team was one of the worst. Our runningback was number 2 and we were one of the best teams. Our team didn’t have the best speed and size, but we played together as a team. A runningback can’t run without blockers, a quarterback can’t complete a pass with out blockers; a linebacker can’t get tackles unless his line eats up blocks and clogs holes. When we would watch film you could see team work every where. If we broke for a big run, there were people trying to get down field to block and if someone wasn’t getting brought down, more of the team would run and help take that person down. Now people may say how does this relate to life? Well, it has everything to do with life. You see people help each other move to a new house, pick someone up if they fall, people giving things to others when they are not asked, or even just helping out because they want to. If everyone believed in team work, wouldn’t there be peace on earth. Less gangs, less war, less poverty, and less judgement.
In Douglas we were always given to. We got a 2 million dollar stadium donated, new cameras for studying film and great support from not just the town, but people across the state. My coaches from pop warner on through high school preached first class. What they ment by first class was to never talk trash, always keep your head up, get each other up when we were down, never give up and most of all, always give back. If we could do these things we would get the luxury of looking first class. One way of giving back to the community for us was joining Block D, a club for varsity athletes to give back to their community and school. Some of the things we did were go to elementary schools and read to the kids, buy turkeys for families that couldn’t afford them for thanks giving, donate to cancer funds and many others. One of the more important things we did was help a kid who had cancer for his entire life fell welcome. He was always in wheelchair, so everyone stared at him. To help him feel welcome we bought him a lettermen’s jacket, a laptop, and within the last few months of his life we got him a nice hair cut and made him a deputy because that was what he wanted to be when he grew up. He ment the most to the football team (besides to his family). He could not play, so he was always on the sidelines with us. When he passed our coach said he was in heaven playing Douglas football. He had the heart of a Douglas football player and more. He fought for his life and never complained about the pain. At one point his cancer was gone, but it returned, even then he did not complain. One of our mottos was “Overcome Adversity”. But no one had adversity like James Lamb, so we then realized how easy life was compared to his. One of my favorite quotes from one of my coaches, Coach Monfeledo, was “Take care of the little things and the little things will take care of them selves.” This had everything to do with life. Not just in football, but in every aspect. School, family, friends, religion, and what ever obstacles got put in front of you through life. James Lamb had that down perfectly. When he died, we mourned, but we also realized we had a big game. The feeling of James not being on the sidelines gave us an extra boost, and we played as a team with a lot of emotion.
The 2006 season was a very odd season, which is where our motto of overcome adversity came from. Our field was being torn up to build our new one, so we had to play on the road all season. We never had home field advantage and were expected to lose a lot because of it. Everyone was wrong. We went 8-2 and took the division title. The game that got us there was against Reno high school. It was their homecoming and senior night, and we took it to them. The next week, we were finally able to play on our field. The stands were filled and more. We had over 3,000 people show. Not only fans, but coaches of other teams. We ended up winning that game by 50 points. The next week we had an even bigger crowd of over 4,000. We didn’t win that game, but we played our hardest and went down as Road Warriors. The team went through some more adversity the season before. We lost a d-lineman. His name was Cory Jackson. Cory was killed in an accident on his way home from work. What happened was, he was coming down from Lake Tahoe and didn’t see a curve in the road and went of a cliff.
Cory wasn’t the biggest kid, but that is what Douglas is known for, small, strong, hard hitting football players.
All sports require hard work, as well as life. Football is one of the hardest though, especially in Douglas. The philosophy here was not to win or loose, but to out work, out hit our opponents, and out smart them. We were to be in the best shape of anyone. We ran hard every day. We thought it was hard, but the coaches were always right, if we were losing in the first half we won in the second half even if we didn’t win the game. Which is where my favorite phrase from the great Ray Lewis comes in, “You don’t have to win it, just don’t lose it”, which to me means no matter what’s going on, you got to keep moving, because only a loser quits. Hitting was what kept us in shape better than other teams too. We would hit so much at practice that when we would go to the game we could keep on taking hits while the other team would start giving up and slowing down before they got hit. What mainly helped with that was the most extreme hitting drill I have ever done. Eye Openers. In life we should all follow the same philosophy, in a way. If you are having a hard time at work, keep going, it may get you somewhere in the long run. If the home life isn’t working out, try and fix the problems instead of giving up on them. That is one problem in America today. People have all these problems in marriage or their car breaks down, or something just doesn’t go right; so what do people do, get a new one. New wife or husband, new car, or new whatever. Why not just fix it and keep what you got.
My first year on varsity wasn’t the best. I had to miss 4 games because of grades and switched positions because I thought it was too hard and dint like the coach. It took me making all those mistakes to see what my coaches have preached all along. My next year I switched back to linebacker and fullback, got my grades up, as well as my strength. I didn’t play much, but knew I was working harder than anyone on the field. I knew I could hit. Late in the season I got more play time because of the hard work and helped our runningback finally get to the number one spot.
