High School Sports, they all have the same core elements. Teamwork, passion, skill, and I could keep this list going with the many things all sports have in common, but what high school football has is much deeper. Yes, you make bonds in any other sport you play, but with football, it is a completely different beast.
In football a group of men go out onto a battlefield armed with nothing but their bodies, against an enemy that is out to cause the most bodily harm they possibly can do to them. This is a mentality no other sport truly has, which causes the bonds to be deeper, and more powerful. Let it be known, football was not my favorite sport. I actually enjoyed basketball a lot more. Also let it be known, I wasn't the greatest at football by any stretch of the imagination. But the family dynamics and brotherhood are what makes it the most important sport I have ever played.
I don't talk about football, and call it the most important high school sport to play because I want to pound my chest and rule football the most supreme over any other sport. A lot of other sports take a lot more technicality and devotion, but don't leave you with the same lasting impression.
From day one that you walk in that locker room, you become something bigger than yourself. You become a link within a family chain never to be broken. Each practice... Violent. Each hit... Violent. Each game... Violent. Each snap... Violent. But that is what draws you closer to your teammates. Each of you is feeling this pain, and together as a unit, you take it head on.
Every game is all out war. Every snap is seven seconds of brutality, trying to prove dominance over the other team. Then you rush back to the huddle from the previous battle, everyone coming back with a new cut, bruise, or limp. By the end of the first quarter the pristine jerseys, fresh tape, and clean skin are now muddy, torn, and are in disarray.
This is a sport where everyone who is playing cannot make a mistake. In other sports, someone makes a simple mistake and it results in a goal, a bucket, or a run, while in football a simple mistake turns into your best friend being in the E.R with a broken bone, or worse. Each play you are fighting for the safety of the brother next to you, as well as your own. You may think in the huddle you got hit hard and have it bad, but then you look to your left and see your friend with a dislocated pinkie finger as he snaps it back into place to play the next down.
Everyone in the huddle, no matter what has been done or said off the field, is family. For the time those eleven people are in the huddle, everyone knows they have got each other's back every play. You form a bond with each player because you know without them, you could be in the back of the ambulance. The bonds created in football need to be deeper than any other sport because every time you lace up your cleats and head out on to the field, could be the last time you play this sport. You are at the mercy of another group of eleven, bloodthirsty guys on the field willing to bang heads in the trenches with you. And all you have are the people standing next to you. This may sound scary, and it can be, but having each other to combat that fear and protect each other, that is what makes us warriors....Brothers.....Family.
