Adversity Vs. Flag Football

Adrenaline pulsing through my body and anxiety filling up in my stomach, I quickly throw on my football gear and head out to the practice field. It’s a nice hot day in Ocala, Florida, with the sun beating down on our necks, we stand side by side in line waiting to be picked to play second, third, or fourth string in a play. Waiting in anticipation, each of us grinding our teeth, watching first string pure athletes colliding against each other like gladiators to have possession of a ball made at one-time of “pig’s skin”. To some people, the game of American football makes no sense, whether it’s the idea of trying to protect a ball or running and passing it to make a goal for your team. People like this, see the concept of football and understand why millions of people love it; but to them the sport is pointless and causes way too many casualties. Coming from the most us who love the sport, it’s not the worry of getting hurt that you mainly

Hi I’m Luke Skewis. I’m a 5’7, Sophomore at Negaunee High School. The stories you are about to read and very important lessons I learned from my friends, family, and coaches. I hope you enjoy The True Diary of Luke Skewis.

Texas is known for its agricultural landscape but most of all by Friday night Football. In small town communities like Dimmitt being on the varsity team is a big deal.Being moved to Junior Varsity football after making the varsity team, put me in a position to contemplate my loyalty to the sport and to the coaches I felt betrayed me.

Nothing hurts more than being excluded. I learned this the hard way my sophomore year. This is a story about my high school lacrosse team. Most of my friends are on the team so we’ve become very close after playing together since the seventh grade. We play lacrosse in the backyard almost everytime we’re together.

Every person faces a type of adversity at some point during their lifetime, and in that instance, he or she can choose to give up or persevere. In high school, I was on the football team. Everyday we had to push ourselves in each aspect of the sport, whether it be patience, discipline, endurance, etc. Whenever I got into the sport, I knew that it would not be easy, but I had no idea the amount of work that I would have to put into it to be successful.

When I was 7 years old I went to my first high school game with my mom, the teams that played were Roosevelt and Flower. I will never forget that day Sept 8th at 8PM friday night lights. My older cousin Brett Pierce was the starting Cornerback for flowers, I admired him because he the starting Corner and he was ranked #23 in the Nation for his position. My cousin ended the game with 18 tackles, 4 interceptions, and 3 forced fumbles that was one of the greatest days of my life. After the game was over I asked my mom could she sign me up to play football, she told me I wasn’t big enough. My mother is very over protective of me since I am her only son.

In life, even though we are told not to do so, a lot of us “count our chickens before they hatch”. We make assumptions on things before they happen because we believe that if something seems so likely, it will happen. Well, that is what my Liberty High School cross country team did my sophomore year. Going into the year, we not only knew we were going to be strong, we thought other teams were going to be weak. The top teams from the state finals the previous year had all lost most of their key pieces. In our minds, the state title was already won.

“Do your job.” A simple quote by Bill Belichick (New England Patriots Head Football Coach) but this quote means a lot about my character. The reason it means a lot to me is because if you work tremendously hard and do your job your team will be successful. My head football coach, Mike Rowe uses this quote as well and adds “If everybody does your job you will be successful. Trust your teammates since they will fight for you and the rest of the team.” I am tying this quote to football but it can be used in any team sport you are involved in. Football teaches character and that’s why I love it so much. I’ve learned so much about myself and how I want to live my life just from being in football.

On the Friday we moved in to Vail, at our hall meeting, our RA asked who wanted to do a flag football team. Most of us were interested and so our whole hall made a team. The games started in September and continued to October. They were almost every week. We did really well and won a lot more games than most of us thought we would. We ended up going to the championships. The game was against Zeta at the big stadium. It was a really good game, we ending up losing. Even though we lost, it was fun and great way to get to know my hall better. I am definitely not good at football, but it was still a good time. In the beginning of the year I hung out with my hall a lot because I did not know many people yet. We all drifted apart once we found our

Semi-state decides if your seasons ends or you make it to state. State is a huge thing in wrestling. It not like all sports because it 's you by yourself. You worked all season to get to that ticket round match and win. The week leading up to semi-state is very quiet. What I mean by quiet is that in class and in practice it 's all very serious. There 's not a lot of messing around. It 's just you and your teammates focusing all week. You have to make practice very hard on yourself. You have to make sure you 're completely focused and going 100%. Outside of practice you have a lot of people distraction you. There will be the people saying stuff like “You made it to semi-state that’s so good.” There will also be the people that say stuff like “Win or lose you made it to semi-state that 's really good.” It 's good that people are supporting you but you can’t listen to that

I had reached high school football which in Texas is almost equivalent to college football believe it or not, football is almost like a religion. Coming from middle school, I knew I was the star linebacker, but high school football is as serious as a heart attack, so I knew my focus had to be on football entirely, and yeah grades of course too. After weeks of two-a-days in the hot, Texas, August heat, I made varsity my freshman year. While I was extremely relieved because this was an incredible accomplishment, my goal still wasn’t within reach and being a freshman on varsity put an enormous amount of pressure on my back, therefore, my work was far from over. My new temporary short-term goal however was to keep my starting position on varsity for the next four years. I was determined to watch as much film, lift as many weights, complete as many reps and overall work harder than any other player on the team to not only prove to myself I deserved this but also to the coaches that put faith into me and our fans as well. I prepared my mind, body and spirit for every practice and game to ensure that I was at my very best level of play every time I put on my pads and uniform. Nevertheless, there was still one thing I wasn’t and hadn’t prepared

I had played football every single year that I possibly could starting with that NYFL league in elementary. When I was playing all those years the same thing kept happening; telling myself that I could be better next year or we as a team could be better next year. Now it being senior year I can’t say “oh we’ll be better next year” because there is no more “next year” for most of us in the senior class. When coach had said those things after practice it was a slap in the face I need to wake up and get after it. When he had said this he was not only talking about football he was talking about baseball, school, life, or whatever you are going to do after high school.

Ever since I was a toddler, I loved sports. Baseball, basketball, it did not matter; I just liked to run. When I was around 4 or 5, I was in the living room watching the Steelers play the Cardinals and saw Santonio Holmes grab a game winning touchdown to win the Superbowl. I was so excited that I jumped up in the air and I told my dad, “Daddy when I grow up I want to play football and I want to score a lot of touchdowns just like 10 does.”

The season started out like any other, one week of pain staking agony and push-ups. The constant workouts, sweat, and two hour practices were completely worth the outcome of my last volleyball season.

In the 7th grade our basketball team was good, we had never played together and our chemistry came out pretty well. The first team we played was Derby, they’ve always been good in about every sport. We worked hard at practice every day leading up to Gameday. We won that game, in fact we won every game except for two in the regular season, we lost to Andover Central and Augusta. Then we had to play Derby in the championship, it was a hard fought game, but in the end, we lost by 3. It was very emotional afterwards, it was very quiet the next day at school.