A life spent around people from all walks of life has taught me one thing: sports aren't for everyone. Some of my very best friends are as well-rounded people as you would find and they didn't play a second of organized sports. Riding to work today, I listened to a story on the radio where a teen shot three other teens due to bullying and that started the wheels turning in my mind about this post and why sports are so important and how dealing with adversity on the field prepares you to deal with problems off the field. I don't know if it would have helped these individuals, but there isn't a doubt that sports prepared me for dealing with bullying and it did so on and off the field.
Not many people can say this, but I think I can. There was a moment when sports made me a man and not only showed me this growth in an instant, but I believe all of the young men around me.
In the summer of 1997 after my eighth grade year, my dad drove me to a summer workout at my future high school. After practice concluded, my dad introduced himself and I to the varsity coach with the sole purpose of begging the coach to allow me to play varsity football as a freshman. I had played on the freshman team in seventh and eighth grade, but this year there would not be a freshman team and my dad did not want me to fall behind.
This was, frankly, a ballsy move by my dad. I was five foot tall and weighed 100 pounds. Not only did I not have anything of value to add to the team, I would be the only freshman to go through summer workouts. While two of my future teammates would eventually find their way onto the varsity team as freshman later in the year, I was the only freshman to have a roster spot on Day One.
I don't recall being overwhelmed at playing with grown men. I just put my head down and went to work, which I already had a good reputation for from the previous two years. Was there bullying in the locker room towards me? Some. But in the heat of the summer, no one had the energy to push me around. There were warnings, however, of what life would be like at school. For a kid that came from a tiny K-8 grade, for which many kids had already dropped out, for a kid that started in "advanced" classes, for a kid that played Cello and went to Church three times a week, for a freckle faced five-footer that weighed 100 pounds, it was terrifying. If there was ever a kid that would be bullied, it was me.
Over that summer, I completely lost touch with my friends from eighth grade. I knew no one from the other middle schools, whose population dwarfed my small rural school. So, on day one of high school, I knew no one in my classes. The first morning before the first bell rang was probably the most intimidating moments in my life. The old Sparkman High School had narrow and dark hallways and my freshman classes were at the end of a long row of upperclassmen lockers and I had to walk past big scary boys that seemed like giants to me.
No one touched me. No one pointed and laughed. On that first Freshman Friday, I remember getting off the bus and standing outside the breeze way because I was terrified of getting thrown in a garbage can. I literally waited for the first bell to ring before sprinting to my first class. I had even planned the route. After the last bell rang and all of the football players, including the guys my age playing JV, made there way into the field house, my worst fears seemed to come true. It was a free-for-all on underclassmen and while I didn't get the brunt of it, I still got a lot. That stopped almost entirely one day and it is that moment to which I refereed.
For some reason, we were short on running backs. I know that our senior star was out with a torn ACL and while there was no way I was going to play running back for varsity, coach needed a tomato can on the practice squad to play running back. I had played QB my entire football career, but I wasn't about to second guess coach. He was far more intimidating than anyone else on the field. I was absolutely terrified at first, but after that first hit, I settled in to playing this position.
Goal line drill. Sweep right. The ball is pitched behind me and I slow my momentum to catch the pitch.
I woke up staring at a blue bird Alabama sky in August with tears streaming down my face.
I was helped to my feet and handed my helmet, which had nearly been knocked into the stands.
A lot of things happened in a very short time but here is what I have gathered. The defensive end and offensive tackle thought it would be really funny if the D-end came off the ball untouched to destroy the little freshman kid from the backwoods school.
Coach didn't think it was funny. More importantly, neither did a lot of the other players. But while they were arguing, coach gave me my helmet, strapped my helmet back on, and I wiped the snot from my nose, and he said:
"Run it again."
This isn't sensationalism where the little kid that could started for varsity and became a college running back. Nothing could be further from the truth. I never played running back again. I had virtually zero playing time that year. The bearing on the team's success or failure wasn't affected a single bit from that day. But I took the hit and I got back up.
My life changed that day and I become the competitor I am because of the events leading to that moment.
What changed?
First, despite being a musician, a nerd, and generally a little boy in a world of men, I earned the respect of not only that football team, but a lot of people in the school. It didn't just happen that day, either. Going through two-a-days, bleeding with them, making the trips with the team even though I wouldn't see a second of PT made me one of them, regardless of the difference of size, age, social background, or ethnicity. There could not have been a wider gap between me and those guys but that was a gap I never knew because of sports. That gap disappeared for those guys, too, because when we are all throwing our guts up, race, religion, age, and ability just don't matter. A player is a player.
Because of that earned respect, I was never bullied by the guys that may have been stereotypical bullies despite being a stereotypical kid.
That doesn't mean I wasn't bullied. I was, but eventually that stopped for the second thing that changed for me. Coach made me get up. I'm not going to say I would have done it on my own because, frankly, that was the most physically dominated I had ever been, and probably remains so. But I did get up and after that few seconds of fear passed, I realized that I had just lived through the worst hit I would ever take and that gave me such confidence.
So, one day when these same guys kept bullying me, that newfound confidence bubbled over. They used me to practice their WWE moves and how I managed to avoid brain damage is still beyond me. In the past, my best defense was to basically play dead. Not this time. I won't go into what happened, except to say that I was never bullied again when I caught these two guys by surprise.
Last, there were still some moments that were scary for me and these typically involved a big mean kid that didn't play sports. I was easy prey being the little freshman boy by himself without any friends his own age. But what they didn't realize was that I did have other friends. I can tell you that some of the biggest, meanest men I ever played with on the field of battle took up for me in the moments when I needed them. These guys owed me nothing. Aside from football, we had nothing in common and, really, still don't. When I became an upperclassman, I brought the same mentality for the young kids, being the senior player.
Sports aren't for everyone and that's perfectly acceptable. It seems that our society has decided that if you aren't good at sports, then there is no place for you in sports and therefore nothing sports can do for you. That simply isn't true. The lack of participation in sports is getting to all-time lows in this country while the affects of bullying are at an all time high. Understand that I am not saying sports will prevent kids from making rash decisions because it won't. But it will help. It is a respect problem. Respect is earned, but that works both ways. The people who bully have never been there, have never earned respect of others nor had respect earned by others to them.
Sports made me who I am. It forged relationships that I never would have had without it. I never made a cent off of sports. I never played a second after high school. But it taught me work ethic. It taught me toughness. It taught me respect and how to be a teammate on and off the field. It was my anti-bully.
