The All-American Injury :: Essays Papers

The All-American Injury "Alright now, I want you to practice hard tonight, go full tilt, and, maybe tomorrow, our pregame practice will be short." The voice seemed a bit edgy, but then again, why wouldn't it? Coach was a little upset that we had lost our season home opener by three points. We were all disappointed by that. Practice had been deadly so far; we were pushed to the limit. Our conditioning warm-up had lasted almost twice what it usually was, and we were all dragging our feet. We were barely a half-hour into the usual Wednesday night ritual. "I want linemen down in the end zone," a husky voice cried out from behind the coach. The man who had hand-picked the Varsity players from the rag-tag group of civilians at the beginning of the season, and had turned them into a finely tuned, well-oiled piece of machinery, was expecting us to break into a full sprint for the end zone at that moment. When no one started running, he hollered. To underline his desire, hemade a few remarkable promise sof pain and suffering if his orders were not obeyed. Being one of the slowest members of the team, I was the third to the last man to the end zone. Naturally, I was the third one to be chosen for the endurance test. "Pits," the large man trumpeted, being drowned out in volume by the hoots of nearly twenty linemen. We loved pits, the mere mention of the word pumped overdosing amounts of adrenaline into the blood system. In this series of pits, however, there were two men threatening to invade my corner of the world, instead of the usual one man. This made the odds a little more interesting... for both corners. It gave one man a chance to prove how tough he was, and how weak the other two were, and it gave us our chance to earn respect among our peers. Taunting began almost immediately. One man's comment about another's sister quickly brought a retort about their mother. The battle was on. The teams were predetermined according to strength, size, and skill level. Having the chance to catch our breaths, and get our blood flowing to the appropriate parts of the brain, we faced off with abundant energy, and it proved to be rather competitive. "Walterick, Setcavage, Curtis, here now," the booming voice echoed in my helmet. Trotting over to the designated area, much as a warhorse into battle, I found myself at the end of a few selective comments about jelly doughnuts, and dead animals.