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.