Day 7

Birthday by Katy Perry

I saw an old friend/teammate of mine get engaged a few days ago. I wanted to give him a quick shoutout.

I was fortunate enough to be brought up to the varsity football team as a sophomore when I was in high school. At the time it was a big deal.

I’ll never forget my first team meeting with the big boys in the summer. I wore a grey nike long sleeve, nike elite basketball shorts, and some white long tights. I had to get something from the front of the classroom when one of the special teams coaches called out “hey, tights guy!” and it got some laughs from the seniors.

When you’re the youngest on the team you tend to get a lot of attention. Not only was I one of the youngest, but smallest too. The bell curve of nerves to excitement then down to fear was very real and fast in those first initial weeks.

My most humbling moment came when I was lifting with the team during my first week. If you’ve seen whiplash, I felt like I was Andrew when he got set up by Terence Fletcher at the end before going on his epic solo. A step too slow with weight way too heavy desperate to just fit in so no one realized how out of place I was. One of the seniors (who is now one of my closest friends) pulled me aside and said ~nicely~ I need to step it up.

I grew up fast – I didn’t really have a choice unless I wanted to be brought back down to JV.

I went back to what I knew best – just playing. I soon gained some respect from the seniors and started to fit in. They started to invite me to things, opened up a world for a kid who couldn’t even drive.

I knew I had made it when the seniors would start to offer me rides. When you’re a sophomore hanging out with seniors in high school, it’s the equivalent of knowing the guy that owns the nightclub, getting to skip the line and be apart of the show. It’s arguably one of the coolest things you could do at the time.

We were on our way to a 7on7 tournament – I rode in the back with two seniors. One was arguing how you need to listen to rap on the way to a game and country on the way back. There was a lot of back and fourth, and finally my teammate had had enough and played this Katy Perry song with no shame whatsoever.

It might be Katy Perry’s most underrated song arguably ever. Whenever I hear this, I’m brought back to the back of a beat up honda having to move a sea of spit cans with my legs with some super cool seniors just happy to be along for the ride.