Trials & Tribulations of a 3% Child

Early in my football career I had to learn how to cope with losing a lot. I truly gained a deep understanding of teamwork, discipline, and hard work. I also understood that although you may be doing everything you can to succeed, that it still may not be good enough and you have to understand that it may not be your fault. There are other factors that come into play in everything you do in life, and until you can coherently measure, examine and plan for, against, or with them, your chances for success grow slimmer.

While playing football in my early years my mother being as smart as she was made sure we stayed on top of our education. There was no practice unless the majority of your homework if not all was done. She would end up being the judge on what that was and we eventually gained a mutual understanding. So it was school, home for homework, and then off to football practice which started at 6. After that it was home for dinner, and if I had any homework to finish I did that and then went to bed. Seeing as how football came natural to me, I didn't understand at first why it was that our team lost so much. In my eyes I was doing everything I could, I mean I literally played whatever position the coach needed me to and I excelled at it. Somehow it was never good enough.

Every year we played a neighborhood rival team which I eventually learned was literally around the corner from my house. This team was feared amongst the league and threatened to win it all every season. I always looked forward to playing them so I could measure just how good I was and every time, once again, I excelled at doing my job, but it didn't matter, because my team still lost. Once I realized just how close they were to me amongst some other factors, being my mother becoming not able to take us to practice for my current team anymore, I eventually tried out for the rival team. I wasn't welcomed with open arms of course, but when they recognized the talent they couldn't deny it. I eventually earned a starting position and was an integral part of the team that year. The icing on the cake was the fact that we won every game and the championship my first year with the organization and I was awarded with a runner up MVP award.

So although nothing really changed about me, to reach a higher level of overall success I had to end up changing teams. Some would probably look at it as me quitting on the one team. I on the other hand look at it as this. If you wanted to go on a rather long road trip. You wouldn't take your car if it was a little shaky, you would rent a rather new one that you knew had a better chance of successfully getting you to your destination. Nothing changed about you, but changing vehicles would ensure a better chance for you to successfully get to your destination. The goal for me was to win, and now I was officially a winner. It felt truly wonderful at the end of the day to get that feeling of your hard work being rewarded.

I would go on to win a countless number of games, championships and personal awards with this organization. The coaches and team parents there were steadfast on being the best and didn't let education suffer at the cost of it. We had a rather nice network of people that truly cared about us and it followed us through high school and onto college. If it were one thing I could have changed it would be the fact that while others may not have felt this way, I may have gotten some lessons wrong. I was always under the impression that we needed to do good enough in class so that we could be eligible to play sports. Never was the thought of an academic scholarship really talked about. I figured if I didn't do good enough in class to play sports, I wouldn't play therefore I wouldn't be able to get to college. This would eventually lead me to develop skewed views once I hit junior high.