The Joy and the Pain of Football: Actually, I didn’t like football. I hated the practices. I dreaded the games. But somehow, I couldn’t bear the thought of being benched while everybody else was playing.
A teen describes the ups and downs of being on his high school football team.
“It was Hell Week, the most intensive practice right before the football season. My legs felt like concrete from sprinting in the hellish August heat. I was so thirsty and hot in my heavy football pads, I squeezed the sweat from my T-shirt and drank it. My ears hurt from the coaches yelling: “Dammit Weintraub!”
I had missed summer conditioning and my coaches weren’t going to let me forget it. They had benched me my junior year and this year, I found myself holding a bag for the starters to hit. The starters were the guys that were actually going to play for the team.
During the middle of the week, the two most dedicated guys on the team pulled me and a few other guys aside in the weight room. They told us that they would rather have other guys that weren’t as good as us playing if we didn’t care and showed no dedication. One of them said, “I would rather lose then have you there if you don’t try.”
After this pep talk I worked a little harder. Even though I hated football half the time, and I just wanted practice to be over, I wanted to be a starter my senior year. I wanted my jersey to be dirty after every game. I wanted to see dirt and chalk marks all over it.
One day a guy that was starting got sick and they put me in. At first I was messing up and didn’t really know where I was supposed to go on some of the plays. “Where the hell are you going, Weintraub?” the coaches screamed. One coach pointed over to the guy who I replaced and said, “That’s our real starter.” Infuriated, I started going my hardest. Every play I just kept hitting. Finally the coaches stopped screaming at me.
Two days before the game started, my head coach informed me that I would be starting. Oh man! I was happy, but what if I messed up? What if I had to play against some guy that was a lot bigger than me?
Before our first game, I barely slept. I prayed for an earthquake or even a tornado so the game would be cancelled. No such luck. As I walked out on the field I noticed the other team. They had some big boys. The coaches had told us that Hamilton’s team was saying they were going to kick our ass and that we better get up for the game.
Soon the game had started. Before the offense had even taken the field, the score was 14-0. When I finally ran onto the field, I looked over at the guy that I was to play against. He looked like he belonged in the N.F.L. He was four inches taller than me and 40 pounds heavier. I swallowed hard and braced myself. The first play that we ran on offense was being run towards me, which meant that I would have to block this behemoth. Needless to say, I got my butt kicked. He swept me aside like a bear moving his cub. Every time we ran a pass play, he would get so far into my quarterback’s face that by the end of the quarter, they were good friends. The guy definitely owned me in the first quarter. The next day as we watched the films, my coach asked, “Is that you getting steamrolled Weintraub?”
I had to do better
But as the game went on, I had a talk with myself. I mean, what was there to be scared of? Unlike on the streets, we were both wearing pads. The next three quarters of the game I went my hardest and started to do well. It was only when I was mentally beating myself that I did bad. When I concentrated and tried my hardest, I could block him.
Our second game, we were tied 14-14 at halftime. We blockers weren’t playing well. We were losing yards and our running back was getting tackled. The running back (who happened to be black) yelled at us blockers in the locker room. One of my fellow blockers (who happened to be white) threw him against the lockers. He was so mad that his face turned beet-red. You might think all the black guys would get on him, but no one did. The assistant coach (who happened to be black) said, “It’s okay, sometimes families fight.” Then we came out and won the game. We played more as a team.
Not too long after that, the lineman coach came storming up to me and yelled at me for blocking the wrong person. It suddenly occurred to me that he was black. He didn’t care that I was a white guy from Beverly Hills. In our football pads we were all the same. I felt happy and proud, but I tried not to smile, because I figured it would just make him madder.
Before each game the black players on our team would chant “game time n—-rs.” Of course the white players couldn’t say it—we just kept silent during it. Seeing that this was a problem, our head coach (who was black) told us that we couldn’t use that word anymore. I was really glad he did that because it made us all equal.
And we all equally had to practice. We practiced for three and a half grueling hours, five days a week and on Saturday we had to come early in the morning to watch game film. Even on holidays or “pupil-free days,” when the rest of the school didn’t have to go to school, we did. Guys would go to great lengths to miss as much practice time as they could. I used to take extra long to get my ankle taped or schedule make up tests during practice to miss as much practice as possible.
The coaches caught on, and said we had to be on time or we would have to run extra sprints. I ran extra on more then a few occasions.
The next four games went very well for me. I gradually got better game by game. By the fourth game we had beaten one of our rivals. It was sweet because they had beaten us four years in a row. My head got big. I thought that I had accomplished everything that I had set out to do. Here I was four games into the season, my starting job was pretty secure, and we were undefeated. I thought that I didn’t have to try anymore. With about two minutes left, I sprained my ankle and didn’t return. The following week I didn’t play either, and I felt pretty smug watching the game.
The next week, even though my injury prevented me from performing at full capability, I was back on the field during practice. It was pretty obvious that I wasn’t at 100 percent. I couldn’t put a lot of pressure on my leg and I kept getting beat. The coaches gave me a lot of opportunities to rest but it was clear that they were rushing my injury too fast. Our next game was against Morningside. That game that will forever hold a place in my memory.
Every year we beat Morningside. Knowing this, my ego reached mountainous heights. I didn’t think that I would have to work hard against Morningside. This game would be like a walk in the park. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. The guy over me was big, strong and fast. I could barely move the leg which I put most of my weight on, and I had to deal with a quick guy. I had to play with my hands, which unfortunately leads to penalties in football. I got my first penalty for holding in the first quarter, which meant that we lost 15 yards on the play.
The coach was mad
C’mon, I thought to myself, what’s wrong with me? Concentrate, Daniel. Only a few plays later I got another holding penalty. Right before halftime, I gave up a costly sack. A linebacker ran toward me and I failed to block him. He got past me and tackled my quarterback. I felt like dying. I wanted to be anywhere in the whole world but there.
At halftime my coach barked at me for my two penalties and called me an idiot in front of the whole team. The team didn’t know what was wrong with me and I didn’t know what was wrong with myself either. My mind was somewhere else, it just didn’t feel like I was really there. By the time the game ended, I had gotten five personal penalties for a total of 50 yards worth of penalties. Though we won the game, for me it was the worst game of my life. The next day a Players Only meeting was called and our team captains told us that we needed to play harder and show more effort to make sure that there wasn’t going to be a repeat of what happened at Morningside.
The teasing I got from my teammates hurt. One guy said that I might break the school’s record for holding penalties. Yet, despite playing the worst game of my life, I still had a big ego. I thought, why should I even try anymore? My position is fairly secure, there’s no way that the coach will bench me. That week in practice I didn’t go very hard and it showed. I was getting beat by second- and third-team players.
Before our next game I was determined to play better then I did last week, but the coaches had other things in mind for me. In our pre-game practice, they only put me in twice. They put guys in my position that had never even played it before. I knew what was going to happen that game, though I didn’t want to admit it at the time. I barely played. Instead of putting me in, they put in a guy who had never played anything but garbage time. The message that they were trying to send me rung loud and clear. If I didn’t try, then I was worthless to them. It was better to have a less talented player who was trying his hardest, then a talented player who gives no effort. I learned from this benching that nothing in life is guaranteed. You have to try your hardest constantly, not just once in a while.
When I got home that day after the game I was mad, hurt and ashamed. I took out my frustration by lifting weights. I kept having images of the game while I was working out. I saw some other guy playing instead of me. I remembered how awful it was being a benchwarmer last year. I imagined everyone in my school looking at me and knowing that I don’t get time on the playing field. I saw my teammates celebrate after scoring a touchdown, and look at me oddly as they came onto the sideline.
Then I went out to dinner with an old friend who had come to the game to see me play. He noticed the glum look on my face. He said, “Why do you play if you’re not that into it?”
I asked him why should I care about this team and put my heart into it when it will all soon be over? Whenever I really cared about something, it always went away at the end. I didn’t want to feeI that hurt again over football.
My friend said some people have kids and never get close to them because they know they’ll leave one day.
I said, then why do they have kids?
He said, why do you play football?
After thinking about this I realized that he was right. I vowed right then and there to try my hardest, no matter what.
The next week in practice I didn’t care how tired I was. I stopped making excuses and whining about getting unfair treatment from coaches and about some big “conspiracy” that I thought they had against me. Every time I messed up on a play I swore to do it again perfectly. Even the coach that I didn’t really care for started to notice and appreciate my effort. They put me in for the whole game that week. And I really started to feel good about myself.
The heat was on
I was feeling the pressure, though. Right about that time, my mom was yelling at me about something. I snapped at her and started screaming and slamming doors. My coaches yelled at me every day. I couldn’t handle being yelled at by my mom too. Plus I had homework. Every player had to keep a 2.0 GPA to stay eligible for the season. When playoffs came we only had one ineligible player but many guys were in danger of it and constantly talked about it.
I kept trying hard each and every day for the rest of the season. After every game my jersey was dirty, just how I liked it. I was getting less selfish. I started to actually care about my teammates. I wanted them to do well, and for us to win. Up until that point I really didn’t care about winning, I just wanted to get into the game. Now I was one of the loudest on the sidelines when I wasn’t in. I kept cheering for us to do well. I praised my teammates when they did well, and I congratulated everyone when we won.
Before every game our whole team gets close together, we raise our hands, and yell, “Hills.” This pregame ritual used to mean nothing to me. But now I got really into it, yelling “Hills” at the top of my lungs.
Unfortunately our season ended in the second game of the playoffs. Up until that point we were undefeated. We had the most wins in our school history, but the season was still considered by some a disappointment because we were predicted to go all the way. I remember that after the game, in a way I was happy that we had lost. No more being fatigued every day. Now I could do all the things that I wanted to do during the season. I could find a job and live happily ever after.
But for some reason after the game, while I still had my pads on, I laid my head in my hands and tears ran down my face. Me and the other “tough” football players, we were all crying like little babies. Our last game was over.
Our banquet took place a few weeks after our season ended. I didn’t win any awards and I wasn’t one of the best players on our team. But our team finished 11-1, and I was part of it. It’s a great feeling. I still remember my third-to-last game, when my brother flew down from San Francisco, and my father took time off from work to come see me. I played really well against our biggest rival, Culver City. When they ran the ball my way, I did my best to block it. And that’s what I had to do.”