Morgan Holliday
Life as a football player is challenging with problems stemming from either school, injuries, self-doubt, college recruiting, or time. Football players have and live with these problems on a daily basis.
School is a big problem and probably one of the most stressful and mentally draining ones. If the player has dreams and aspirations of playing football in college, depending on how you do in school will either make or break your dream of playing in college. It’s hard to manage your time because you have practices, meetings, workouts, injury prevention, and more. On top of this, you have to try to fit in homework and studying in your schedule as well. As a football player myself, I have to say that it is difficult to manage everything. Personally, there have been multiple times where I’m up late at night working on assignments due the next day. If you want to play at the next level, then you need to have a cumulative GPA above 3.0 for some colleges. I did not care about my grades during my freshman and sophomore years, which put me in a bottomless hole. Still, these past two years I’ve been very hard on myself, trying to get my GPA up so colleges will be interested in having me at their university.
Injuries have personally been a big problem for me as I have been one of the smallest players on all my teams, and I play against opponents at least two to three times bigger than me. I have had at least four concussions and around ten leg and ankle injuries over my entire time playing football. I’ve seen and witnessed players on my team and others break bones. It’s disgusting and miserable because their whole season is over until the next year after that. Sometimes, it may not even be a player’s intention to injure someone, but it just happens, and that is the unfortunate part about the game. However, since it’s such a physical sport, players know that it could happen, and it’s a risk that they are willing to take. For high school football players, the injury rate during competition has ranged from 11.26 to 13.52 injuries per 1,000 athletes; on the surface, that number may not look like much, but it is still concerning. Recently, sports companies have been inventing new padding and helmets to negate the amounts of injuries in-game, especially for concussions.
Self-doubt has also been an issue for me and other players because you see players these days who are super tall and big before they even become seniors in high school. Some are not as fortunate to have these attributes, and when you are lined up against someone bigger and stronger than you, then the doubt creeps in, and you start getting in your head and thinking, “I can’t do it”. Other players just believe they are not good enough in general because of all these sports media outlets posting about high school players having a lot of college offers or making incredible plays that they may not be able to do. Still, some players are good at not letting self-doubt control them. I am not one of these players; I’m about 5’7, and I play against people who are about or above 6’0 daily. Sometimes, the height difference poses a challenge, but that is what separates the good players from the great players; great players will keep on going, no matter what, while good players will get caught up in what they cannot control. You see players in the NFL be shorter than average, and they still make an impact in games. It’s cool to watch, mostly since I’m shorter than the average player. It is very motivating and inspiring.
The college recruitment process is possibly one of the most stressful yet essential parts of a career in high school football. I know what this feels like as I am going through it right now, daily you have to email coaches, call coaches, research colleges, find which one is right for you and which one will best prepare you for the future. With the coronavirus situation still going around, recruitment is far more stressful for both coaches and players because the rules for recruiting are different. For example, there are no visits to some colleges. You have to talk and meet new coaches via Zoom or a phone call rather than meet them and talk to them in person, making it difficult to create the crucial relationship with a coach. Time is also a major issue and is vital to finding success as a team.
But at the end of the day, I still love this game with all my heart. The field is my safe place; it is where I find peace away from the game that is life. With football, you make such essential relationships that will surely be there for eternity. I wouldn’t even be able to imagine how different my life would be without football. Even with all the stress, it is worth it because, along the way, you learn so many important lessons about life, teamwork, communication, relationships, and so much more. Without football, I would not be who I am right now. Imagine the most important thing in the world to you. It could be a person, thing, food, anything you cannot live without. Imagine someone rips it away from your hands, or destroys it, throws it out, or tells you that you can never see it again. What you’re feeling now is how I would feel if football was taken away from me. That is how much I cherish the game.