Personal Narrative: My First Football Career

I was nine years old the first time I put on football pads. I will be eighteen when I wear them last. Words can’t do justice to describe the journey football has been for me. Nothing in my life, short of the relationship with my dearest family members, has spanned as long as my football career. A single game is a drop in the bucket when looking at a career of over 100 games, but all it takes is one game to show where a player’s character lies. Before the fourth grade, football was nothing more than a pastime, spent with my friends on the schoolyard. That changed the day I had my first football game. I had gone from catching touchdowns during recess to playing offensive guard and defensive tackle. I was no longer with my friends, but with a random group of kids who also shared the same aspirations for gridiron glory as I did. …show more content…
There is always time for another game when playing backyard ball, but on the true gridiron, you have a set number of games, with extras coming at a season of hard work. This isn’t a story of a come behind win or a game lost after a tough dog fight. We lost by over 40 points that day. We were outplayed, outcoached, and outskilled. With 13 players to cover 22 positions, 11 on offense and 11 on defense, we simply did not have a chance against a team of 30 that was in their third season together. By the end, I had never been more exhausted and I looked at my teammates and I could tell none of us could quite grasp what had just happened. We played hard and did what our coaches told us to. Why hadn’t we won? Where was that glory we all strived for? What was the point of practicing? I did not know for a while. We lost another 5 games, losing by a rather large sum in nearly all of