Personal Narrative: The Perfection Of Football

Walking in with wrists still taped and a swollen upper brow, I donned my royal blue “Marshall Acadeca” team shirt as I sat down to take the science exam. My senior year I decided to subject myself to the lunacy that consisted of maintaining my role as the running back of my football team, and simultaneously competing for our nationally ranked academic decathlon team. As my head still rang with the intensity of a church bell, I powered through the test and nine more the same way which I had powered through the opposing team’s defense just a few minutes ago repeating to myself “almost there”.
The combination of mental and physical strain that football and decathlon created had become the norm for me over the past 4 months and my thoughts at night reverberated between regrets, and dreams of flying to West Indies to escape it all. Highlighters had surprisingly become my closest friends as I studied the 10 different subjects that Decathlon required its competitors to master. A few months prior, I would have laughed at the thought of studying for five hour sessions daily, as all I had known previously was binge reading chapters the night before and into the morning before a test. But the determination to deviate away from my poor academic past led me to apply that same discipline which football had ingrained in me to

I’ve brought this mindset with me into my collegiate studies and plant to continue to apply it to the rest of my life. Thanks to this experience, I do not hesitate or feel fear when faced with adversity. I trust in my resilience to overcome whatever hurdle presents itself, and immediately begin searching for solutions that will allow me to reach the goals that I set for myself. As far as I can tell my only limits, are the ones I place