Luke Desmarais
Crack! It’s the sound of helmets and shoulder pads smashing together. The blazing hot summer days running up the hill feeling like there is no way you could sweat anymore. The frigid November nights that you need two long sleeve shirts just to keep your arms from going numb. The glory you feel making a big hit or scoring a long touchdown. This is football season.
Ever since fourth grade I would go to the games on Friday nights and watch the tigers and dream of the day that jersey would be mine. This dream would echo in my brain every time I would watch a game.
Finally I became a freshman. Football practices were hard and there wasn’t a chance of me seeing the field on Friday nights. Sophomore year I got my chance on special teams and I took advantage of it but it still didn’t satisfy me because they weren’t impact roles. Junior year I was back deep returning kickoffs. Opening kickoff, under the lights, in front of my friends and family. It was everything I ever dreamed it would be.
That year we had a very good team and I was very appreciative to be a part of it. Then it was all gone in a flash. I remember when it first happened; I’m not sure what hurt more the pain of breaking my arm or the thought of not being able to play the rest of the season. I didn’t seem fair, the fact that something I wanted for so long had just been stripped away from me so quickly. Then to top it off our team went to the super bowl and won, while I sat there on the sidelines thinking what I could have contributed if I hadn’t broke my arm.
I never wanted to feel the helplessness of not being able to play ever again. As soon as that cast came off, there was a sense of urgency. I needed to get a lot better in a year’s time to achieve my goal of starting again. I lifted every day with some of my friends determined that nothing was going to stop me my senior year.
When the season came I was excited to try and earn a starting position. Something that I never expected happened; our head coach made me one of the captains. This added even more pressure to find a starting spot on the team. I achieved my goal that I set in fourth grade; in our first game I was the starting strong side linebacker. This was such an ebullient moment for me. Something that I had worked toward almost my entire life had finally been achieved. From being that little kid watching a game, to being that player that a little kid looks up to.
