Centered

All of a sudden, a white hot knife of pain went stabbing through my leg and I crumpled to the ground. My teammate fell on top of me and my face was shoved against the rancid mat room floor. I could vaguely hear people around me – asking, “Did you hear a pop?” I felt like I was underwater. My world moved in slow motion and seemed to lag behind reality. My vision blurred and I remember someone calling my name from what seemed like a long ways away.

It had been a cloudy, typical winter day in Texas. The intermittent rain gave the impression that someone in the clouds had been wringing out a giant washrag for the past couple of hours. My friends and I were enjoying the refreshing natural showers on our walk over to the field house for football practice. Our season had ended uneventfully about a month earlier and we were in the middle of off season. Afternoon workouts consisted of yelling, running, and puking in no particular order. We had grossly underperformed within our district and the coaches were taking every opportunity remind us of our 3-7 record.

Practice began sharply at one and my existence soon became an indistinguishable combination of sprinting, sweating, and not being good enough. Our coaches had decided to make that Friday a competition day, and had different sets of relays or challenges at each station. After the team stretched and listened to our head coach for announcements, chaos ensued as each group dashed off toward our first station. I was feeling good through the first three challenges, even winning one of the speed shuttles. At the time, I possessed no upper body strength, but twelve years of soccer had given me the agility that allowed me to always be competitive. 

One of the coaches had wanted to talk to me after the previous drill, and I was in an all out sprint to catch up with the rest of my group. I threw open the mat room door to the sound of the linebacker coach screaming at everyone to find a partner. The room smelt of twenty years of sweaty, adolescent male and had a torn up black mat covering the majority of the floor. I frantically searched for someone who hadn’t already paired up and discovered the only kid left was our two hundred fifty pound center. I took a deep breath and prepared for what I knew was going to be a miserable experience. We were actually a pretty good team for the first couple of races. Sure, I was slow when it came to trying to support his weight since the kid was twice my size. But the fact that he could throw me over his shoulder, and carry me around like an empty backpack tended to even things out. Everyone knew Coach Cheeks was always obsessed with having us physically carry our teammates, and we were all dreading what we could tell was going to be the final race. He had one of those voices that sounded kind of like someone revving their car engine. You could never really understand what he was saying, but if he started yelling louder you had better figure it out. He started crescendo-ing , “Piggy back! Piggy back!”, and we all knew what to do. I hopped on the center’s shoulders and he took off across the room and back. We were in good shape since he had practically looked like Usain Bolt compared to some of our more equally paired competition. I fell off his back and braced myself to carry a small car. My body strained with effort. Slow and steady wins the race isn’t a mantra that football coaches understand. Coach Cheeks was almost physically inside my ear, bellowing at me to run faster. I quickened my pace as the pair next to me began to catch up. The end of the mat was in sight. I tried to slow down in preparation to turn around and run back to the other side of the room. My desire to win planned a quick pivot and a gut-check sprint back to the other side. Then the mat became slippery with sweat from previously fallen competitors and my left foot shot out from under me. The weight of the world came crashing down on my right knee.