Overcoming Adversity In Football

I have played football since I was six years old. Football is associated with violence for some, but I look at it as a lesson. Some of the most valuable life lessons that I know and use came from football: from taking pride in what you do to always having room for improvement no matter how good you are. The biggest life lesson that has always stuck with me is overcoming adversity. Out of all my years of playing football, we have never gone undefeated, and I have always faced the adversity of being down in games. We have been down in games multiple times, but our coaches taught us to keep fighting and overcome the adversity.
My senior year in youth football we played against a team that was considered a rival. We should have come into the game …show more content…
Our coaches just wanted to get out of the first half. Once we got the ball back, our coach called a timeout. He called us over and started to yell at us; most would think that the way he was yelling was too much, but we knew as a team we needed it. He told us, "we are just trying to get out of this half; we need to run and protect the ball and make the clock run. Can you do that for me?" "Yes sir," we all said. Ten plays after the timeout we made it into halftime. The coach told us not to say a word and to sit on the bench in the locker room. We all filed into the locker room and sat down with our heads hanging. Our coach took a minute to collect himself and then told us to look up. Rather than yelling at us he spoke to us in a soft voice. "Do you think this is all you got?" We started to look around at each other and replied all at once, "No sir!" "Then why are we playing lower than what we should be?" he asked. "Nobody said this would be easy. You all came into this game thinking we would win and would not have to fight." He paused for a bit. "Let me tell you: in life you will have to fight every day to be successful. If you do not fight for something and fight the adversity you face, then you will be run over just as you …show more content…
"You guys have to come out this second half and put the first half behind you. Show me you can fight the adversity of this game and fight back and come out on top," he said sternly. "Let 's go show them we are not a team to sleep on. Let 's show them that we are willing to fight while we are down and we are ready to fight the adversity and that we are stronger than they ever will be," he shouted. We stood up prepared to win. We knew in our minds that losing was not an option. We knew that to win, we would have to overcome the adversity we were