It was 1992 and it was the summer before my freshman year, I just had started Central High football camp roughly a month before school started. The first week was what they call conditioning week which translated into running your ass off, after a summer of playing video games and eating pizza needless to say it sucked. So for the next two weeks I had thoughts of quitting. I wasn't used to the culture diversity of this school and not going to lie, I was a little intimidated by being one of the only white kids and not knowing anyone made things strange. Prior to this I went to the same school from kindergarten though the 8th grade so I wasn't used to change like this. One day running though their torture drills they had I fell on my ass and this african american kid Kevin helped me up and and patted me on the back and told me you got this man! Now let's do this! So I pushed on and after two weeks I started to know everyone and found a sense of worth and need. Playing football in Jr high I had lifted weights and prided myself in being stronger then all the other kids and being a lineman I was depended on to protect my other team mates and Kevin being the quarter back I wasn't going to let him get hurt. So in a month I went from being the weakest links to someone who was dominating at drills. The coach Mr Staley was the best coach I had to this point he was always funny and you could tell he cared about his kids but he would push you to your full potential. I Remember we lost a game to Kickapoo, I think we lost before we started we had probably 17 kids on our team and they had a storm trooper like army  of 40 or so kids. So after seeing this horde of players march on the field we gave up so after losing our next practice our coach wore a  complete Kickapoo  jersey and told us he had a new team he knew we had given up before we started and pissed about it. So after we promised not to give up he promised not to wear the jersey again. I loved playing football and it will always bring me happy memories it's hard to believe something I almost quite would become something I would always cherish.