Football - Part 2a

Nothing prepares you for your first hit. Not for the anticipation and fear beforehand, or the impact and struggle in the moment, or the joy and pain after. I still remember that first hit, along with everything that came with it.

Eight years ago, I was dropped off at my first practice unconscionably unprepared for the experience. My ineptitude extended even to the most basic tasks, such as knowing which pads went where. A week behind my teammates because of an ill-timed Boy Scout canoe trip, I tried, at my first practice, to simply stand in the back and follow the others' lead. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that this was not an option. In what now seems like wanton negligence bordering on child abuse, I was ordered to drop into a three-point stance and hit the guy in front of me as hard as I could. After a moment's hesitation I did so, closing my eyes and burying my shoulder into that of the man across from me.

What I felt was nothing. There was neither pain nor release, only a muffled thud and a hurried exhale. Whatever fear of inadequacy or pain quickly vanished. I dropped back down and waited to reload. The second time around I threw even more force into the hit. This time, instead of a muffled thud there was a sharp crackle of metal hitting plastic.

Ross Tucker, former NFL center and special teams player, wrote an op-ed piece for Sports Illustrated in which he described the "collisions between the wedge and the wedge breakers are some of the most vicious in football, and it takes a special person to want to perform these duties... You have to either crave physical contact, be a little crazy, or maybe a combination of both." He wrote that piece a week before Kevin Everett was nearly permanently paralyzed on just such a hit during the Buffalo Bills regular-season opener.

If the hit Tucker described is used as a base value (10) on a scale of the intensity of hits, my first hit was a 0, and my second maybe a 1. It was nothing, and yet still something. It gave me confidence to keep playing, even when the next day, exhausted and sore, I wanted to quit. The years of memories and friendships after would not have been possible without that cowardly imperfect hit.