Don’t lie. Don’t ever lie. Don’t lie about your grade or how much money you have or in this case, about your body. This is the story of how a fifth grade boy who wanted to play so bad, almost cost him his entire career. 

I was in fifth grade at the time. Just a little kid playing against local fifth and sixth graders from around the area. Every year most kids would join their local team and have some fun and play around. I was just ten years old, and I was in love with the game that America is in love with, football. I eat, sleep, talk, and bleed football. If you ask me what I want to do with my time, it will always be something football. Whether I want to play the latest madden or fire up my old xbox-360 so I can play NCAA football 14 or just throw the ball around with friends; I will do anything, literally anything, to play football. In the fourth grade I started playing quarterback which I had always wanted to do. My dad and I had always played catch in my backyard and he would always tell me I was going to be a quarterback. In fourth grade, when I earned the starting job for quarterback, I loved it. I loved the adrenaline, the hits, I loved everything about the position. Naturally, on my fifth and sixth grade team I tried out for quarterback. I was going up against a huge sixth grader who everyone said was going to be the quarterback. Jace, the other quarterback was already the starter from the beginning. This would lead me to try everything and risk my body to become the starter. 

As we played our first game Jace started, then I went in, then he went in again, then I would play the rest of the game and this went on all season. We had a problem however, our team was terrible. I’m talking Cleveland Browns, Miami Dolphins terrible. We got smoked in all our games but the game inside the game for me was Me v.s Jace, and I was winning. I started pulling ahead making the better reads and the smarter throws. Coach named me the starter and we had our closest game of the year when we only lost by one. This is the part where the fairy-tail story goes “and the underdog quarterback won the starting job and leads his team to the play-offs.” Instead, this is where everything turned bad for me. I showed up to practice as usual from 5-7 at the local middle school and everything went fine. Our coach added new plays for me to run, we set our game plan confident we would win one of our next games and shock everyone. I went home did the usual: shower, eat, finish homework, and then go to bed. I woke up fine the next day and went to practice from 5-7 on wednesday. This is where I almost lost my career.

We opened up with hitting drills which even though I’m a small fifth grader, I get paired up with all the big kids. I did a running drill against our starting middle linebacker, a kid named Joey Moffenbeir, and I was supposed to let him hit me and I was supposed to go to the ground with no resistance. It was flat-out a dumb drill. I ran the ball over in between the cones, lowered my shoulder so I wouldn’t get hit as hard, and wham. I got hit in the head and my head whiplashed into the ground. I got up and when the coaches asked if I was ok I just said,  “I’m fine” but I could feel a throbbing pain in my head. Next it was my turn to hit Jace; I loaded up, got low, and we both ducked our heads and you could hear the crack from everywhere on the field. I got up after the big collision and the coaches loved it. They were yelling at everyone to hit like me and Jace. I walked back in line feeling super dizzy and a throbbing pain in my head. I don’t remember what happened over the rest of practice or anything within a week of that hit. According to my teammates, we scrimmaged the other team, I went in even though they told me I shouldn’t and took some hits. I got confused and started calling the wrong plays and not understanding any of the signs. I don’t remember asking to go to the doctor but I remember going in and him saying I had a concussion. I went to physical therapy and had to get my balance back because I had lost all my balance. I eventually gained everything back but not in time as we finished the year 1-8 only beating a 0-8 team.

Still, after all this, I still am in love with the game. I still live for Saturdays with my brothers on the field winning games. I am not against the game in the least. Yes, kids will get concussions, however, you can get a concussion doing just about anything. So if anyone ever reads this who is a parent of a kid, or a kid who wants to play football, just play, or in the parents case, let him play. If you want to play, play. If you do play though, don’t lie about being injured. Don’t risk your life for football. Yes it’s fun and you want to make people proud, but it’s not worth saying you’re fine when you are not. So yes, I still play and yes, I still start but I risked my entire sports career and my entire life, just so I could play. So if you learn anything from reading this, don’t lie about anything, especially about your head.