Football - Part 4c

A necessary sidebar to any discussion of my sophomore year of high school is the story of my relationship with K. Some of our first and best moments together took place, perhaps unfortunately, with football as the backdrop. While most of the details of our relationship must, as always, remain private, a few snapshots are worth sharing for the view they allow into my story and my character.

Of all the people I have ever known, K is the only one I have ever considered superior to me in every way. I am smart and (sometimes) a good student, she was valedictorian of our high school class and earned straight As through four years of college. I am, or was, a pretty good athlete, she lettered in three sports and currently runs marathons. I can be momentarily kind, nice and friendly, she is (according to everyone who has ever met her) a constant saint. One might wonder, given these facts, why she would ever be interested in me. The answer is I do not have the foggiest clue. Must have been the uniform.

Though I had known her since freshman year (mainly as the annoying girl who bugged me in homeroom every day about Biology class), and had become friends with her through other means, our first "moment" occurred in the stands during one of the first varsity home games of that season.

It was customary at that time for the sophomore players, after their morning game, to shower, eat and head back into the stands to support the varsity team during their afternoon game. Given that I had arrived at school very early that Saturday morning when comfort trumped fashion, I went into the stands that autumn afternoon wearing an old hoodie and pajama pants. I sat down among a group of my teammates and other friends and began watching the game. As the crowd filled up our group merged with those around us and, whether by chance or design, I ended up sitting next to K. We chatted between cheers about unimportant and unmemorable topics until, suddenly, I stood up and took off my pants.

The impetus for this bizarre act was that she was wearing shorts and shivering. She politely refused my offer until I reassured her that: I had just played an entire football game; I have abnormally high body temperature; and, most importantly, I was wearing shorts underneath. Whether or not my assurances were lies, she took and wore the pants. When I asked her some time later what the first moment was when she knew I liked her she named this instance, and she was right.

After growing even closer over the following few weeks I took the next step and asked her, in a very romantic and clever way, to our Homecoming dance. She said yes, with one condition. Under no circumstances was I to get hurt. Even if I broke both my legs she would carry me into the dance herself just so she could show off her dress. I accepted her condition, and took every opportunity I could to scare the hell out of her with fake injuries. I even borrowed a friend's crutches one morning so the first time she saw me would be hobbling into homeroom with a grimace on my face.

Despite her threats not to attend my games for fear of jinxing an injury, she came to all of them, including the Homecoming game played on the back field in several inches of thick mud. To her credit she stood in the drizzling rain for over an hour watching my team and I slip slide our way to a blowout win. When our starters were replaced with scrubs in the second half I made my way over to her, coated in mud, and offered a hug. She refused, but with a smile. Later that night, amongst a number of very entertaining moments, we danced, dined and officially began dating.

Football - Part 4b

My first memory from the actual season is of the pain that shot up my shoulder and neck after an unusually forceful hit during a tackling drill on one of the first days of pads. I was the ball carrier trying to make a diagonal run against a teammate who, I swear to god, insisted people call him "Dash". He, of course, led with his head and we smacked our helmets and shoulder pads together so hard that coaches twenty yards away turned to see what happened. The upside was the modicum of respect I gained. The downside was the stinger that stayed in my shoulder for the rest of the day.

Our head coach, Coach Bliss, was a bulked up firefighter in his 40s with a year-round tan. He wore shorts year-round, sometimes with a tee-shirt so skimpy it would otherwise have only been worn in South Florida in the 80s. As a former quarterback, he specialized in both running an offense and picking up women. He routinely brought women to our year-end banquets that were hotter and sluttier than anyone else could imagine.

It is also safe to say that he hated our defensive coach, Coach Kardasz, who had followed us up from Freshman A. The result was that our coaches ran two simultaneous and separate practices, one for the offense and one for the defense.

Some highlights from those practices included BT running a lap around the field with another player's helmet stuck to his own, and S breaking his collar bone in a non-combat drill.

Occasionally, when the weather was too wet or cold for Bliss and the backs, we would practice in our field house, surrounded by cheerleaders, Hawkettes, and female track runners. To say we were distracted would be an understatement. I faintly recall our quarterback throwing a purposely deep ball to S one practice so that he ran right into the middle of the cheerleader's practice, much to the chagrin of those directly involved and the inescapable laughter of everyone else.

We also once practiced in our school's "back gym". Imagine 75+ kids in full pads in a room not even the size of a basketball court with no windows. To add to the absurdity of the situation, our coaches decided it would be a good idea for us to let off some steam with a game of team dodgeball... in full pads. They set a half dozen balls in the middle of the court and ordered us all to ram each other like rams. Once such contest saw BD butting heads with our starting linebacker (in the upper left in the picture above), twisting his knee, and sitting out half a game.

Every week we also had massive pasta parties hosted by starters, but catered by professionals. I would not be surprised if 100 pounds of pasta was eaten at each party. We largely sat around bonding over football movies and basement boxing matches that lasted until our coaches found out and threatened to work us harder if we somehow still needed to get some aggression. One night I remember in particular, I convinced a teammate who was incredibly high at the time that the cast he was wearing over his broken wrist was in fact someone elses and that he should rip it off if he did not want his ass kicked in the next match. He tried to pry the cast off for several seconds before someone stepped in to ruin my fun.

Somehow our coaches' strategy and mutual dislike worked because our team ultimately went undefeated and won conference for the second straight year. Each week along the way, Coach Bliss would remind us that we were "The Goddamn Worst [insert win total] and 0 team in the f---ing country."

Among the highlights from those games are the following:

• Playing our first game on the Astroturf, and under the lights, at Gately Stadium in the heart of Chicago.
• Playing away games on Friday nights in front of actual crowds.
• A backup safety skinnier than I getting dragged nearly 20 yards by an opposing player before finally tackling him.
  
• Going through our entire pre-game warm-ups dead silent to intimidate our "hooting and hollering" Evanston opponents.
  
• Playing our Homecoming game on the back field (so as not to further mess up the Varsity field) in several inches of mud and pouring rain. We fortunately blew our opponent early, allowing our backups to get their usually pristine jerseys as muddy as the starters'.

Finally, one last great memory from our season was when a dozen of us were selected to "move up" to the Varsity team for the playoff run. While some of my friends were not chosen, mainly because of late-season injuries, I was selected and I have the ring to prove it.

Football - Part 4a

A year ago I prematurely ended a multi-part entry about my days playing high school football because Thanksgiving, the national holiday of turkey and football was over, and my law finals were fast approaching. I wish to resume that series now for no better reason than discussions with friends about Thanksgiving, and our annual Turkey Bowl, have rekindled some long dormant memories. If you will grant me this indulgence, then, I wish to re-start my story during the summer before my sophomore year.

Following my freshman season I was very unsure about whether I would ever play football again. My freshman year was successful, but I had other interests, particularly basketball and my physical health, that I was not convinced were worth the sacrifice football demanded. Despite my public assurances that I was too smart to get hurt, I honestly feared a freak injury was only a play away.

By that summer, though, I began to remember why I loved the sport - the team, the violence, and the fact that not everyone can play this game. Over the summer my new coaches tinkered with the idea of moving me to two other positions. During our morning workouts, when I was not making bets with Mc about whether or not our friend Depilla would drop the ball, I was running routes and catching passes unaware that my coaches were penciling me in as a backup tight end. When they formally asked me to run routes with the JV quarterback I caught at least a dozen in a row before nearly passing out from exhaustion and informing them that I had absolutely no interest in the position.

They then tried me out at strong safety. For several weeks I worked out with the defensive backs under the tutelage of a man we believed was either homeless or a Russian spy. He always wore wrinkled athletic pants and a two-day-old beard, and slung a big duffle bag over his shoulder that we were convinced held either his other clothes or high-powered rifle. It did not help his image that randomly in the middle of drills he would grab his bag, run away, hop the fence and catch a bus back to his other life.

While I enjoyed this experience, and welcomed the change, when the real practices began I was back at my old position, under my old defensive coach, as starting left defensive end.