Gym Candy Comparative Character Analysis Have you ever thought you weren’t good enough? Did you think there was a better way to get better at what you love to do? Mick Johnson, running back for Shilshole High finds a way to become better. Could the way he becomes better affect him and the people around him. Mick and Drew have many similarities and differences that make them who they are and best friends. Mick is somebody that tries many things to get him to become a better athlete. Mick is a daring person because his trainer told him that is illegal for a high school athlete to take steroids but Mick wanted to keep doing them because he liked the results of getting stronger. Being focused is something that Mick is really good at because in his games Mick always wants the ball so he can make a play and he tries his hardest on every play. Football is one of the things that Mick is very passionate about. I know this because on page 8 Mick explains, “I’d played basketball a little, played baseball a little, played soccer a little. I’d played them all enough to know that I was nothing special in them and never would be. If I was going to make my mark, it was going to be on the football field.” Drew is Mick’s best friend who looks out …show more content…
Nobody likes it when somebody is a liar which is what Mick was when Drew was curious about what was in Mick’s duffel bag. Drew is the type of person you can trust because when Kaylee had her birth day party Drew said he was going to be there and he was even though Drew said he was going to be, but wasn’t. Drew gets better by trying his hardest and doesn’t cheat like Mick did when he was taking steroids even though they were illegal. At the end of the book Drew tells Mick, “The only thing I can do. I’m going to Carlson. Don’t do it, Drew. He turned toward me. The anger vanished from his voice. Mick, you need help. Carlson’s been
I’m reading Gym Candy. It is a book about football. This book is about a young boy named Mick is and his dad was a pro football running back. Mick would always talk about his dad and brag about how good he was and how he stopped because he blew out his knee. Well the truth came out and his dad wasn’t taking it seriously. Well now Mick is in high school and is on varsity as a starting running back. The team had just got a new coach and is weight training in the off- season. Well Mick is not progressing and is wanting to go to a different gym. Well his dad is sponsoring a gym called Popeye's and can get him a membership. So now mick has been going there and isn’t progressing and his trainer told him about gym candy, and now he is progressing.
love for competition helped him become a leader on the football field as well as
When i was playing football in my freshman and sophomore year I was not the best player by far. If anything i was probably one of the worst players on the team. I sat bench a whole lot that is for sure, but when i finally began to see how successful my teammates had been it drove me to succeed I was starting to be faster and my hands were becoming better. I was actually putting up a run for the starting position. I never once became jealous of my teammates success i just wanted to be a part of it so i drove myself to where I was a good enough player that I could become a part of it. That is why Margaret Meads view on success is flawed is that we thrive off of one another 's success we don 't see them as a threat because of
When Pauley catches Rocky and Adrian talking about him, he breaks down and blames everyone for where he’s at in his life. He claims he sacrifices everything for everyone and gets nothing in return (Winkler et al., 1976). Rocky is not very confident and doesn’t think he is capable of much. When he’s being offered the title fight, he is not confident and wants to turn it down (Winkler et al., 1976). Neither of them are a positive person. I judged Mick on his relationship with Rocky, where he seemed noxious. He is always showing how disappointed in Rocky. Until Rocky got his title shot, he never said anything nice to him. Even then he made the comment that “there are other fighters that are better, it’s freak luck” (Winkler et al., 1976). Adrian was the only one I felt was more of a nourishing person. She was very good for Rocky and brought out a better side of him. He was able to open up to her and she would listen to him. After listening to reporter make fun of him he told her and Pauley it didn’t bother him. He later opened up and told her that “the stuff on the TV did bother me” (Winkler et al.,
Ripley argues that football is a dangerous sport for students that young to begin to express their rage on and off the field. However, in the article Do Sports Build Character or Damage it? the author Mark Edmundson writes about his experience playing high school football. He said football made him a better person. He gained courage, strength, and heroic character. Edmundson said he applied everything in his life to football, which helped him get a job. Even though he was not the best player, he said he enjoyed going to practice every day to increase his skills. These attributes help Edmundson still to this
The innocence is slowly fading away. Nike, Addidas, Reebok and McDonald are fighting each other off in pursuit of finding a new face to sell and sponsor their products? The camera crews are off course invited, to capture all the action. Films can be later made out of this footage for more revenues. It all about blowing this moment up and making sure it is hyped up to the biggest possible level. The sport news writers have been talking about this for months now. Little kids are now wearing t-shirts with his name on it. His name is increasingly becoming popular all over the world, fans are spending there fortunes on anything with his name on it. We stay eager to here what’s to become of this, as we continued to be rapt up in the hype. The occasion is just as monumental as the coronation of some king or queen. Lights, camera and when the action unfolds, a boy in a man’s body, standing taller than the average, with an ego that has been feed all of his life for his gifted genius as an athlete. He sat in the center of all the attention. The moment we have all been waiting for as arrive, there is complete silence now, to hear him say these words. “I am here today, to declare that I have decided to forgo my college years and make the leap from high school to becoming a professional athlete” We have seen from the recent past the detriments of such decisions. For that reason, it is important that high scholars attend college for at least three years before becoming professional.
When you look at mick in the beginning of the book you would probably see he’s an athlete. He was 175 pounds of mostly muscle and he was about 16 years old. Later in his story he became a 220 pound 17 year old boy made of pure muscle. You might mistake him for a bodybuilder. He really only has one good friend, named Drew. They view each other as friends, but they also get a friendly competition with each other when they play. Everybody else just see him as a high school running back for a really big and powerful highschool.
In sports, there is no shortage of black success stories. Meanwhile, two black men of prominence in Odessa (who are not athletes) fell from grace. Willie Hammond Jr. (the first black city councilor and county commissioner) and Laurence Hurd (a minister and desegregation supporter) were glimmers of hope for the black community that were both snuffed out. Hammond was arrested on charges of arson conspiracy and perjury and Hurd is in prison for burglary and robbery, leaving a hole in the morale of the black community that was not repaired. These losses, combined the with negative news of black people circulated via media, made the possibility of succeeding in a white man’s world inconceivable. Yet, there is no shortage of black success stories in sports, like Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson; in every area that is not a “rich man’s sport”, black athletes dominate. To the poor children on the Southside, there is something very alluring about the “Cinderella stories” of men from poor black neighborhoods rising to prominence through sports. Based on these examples, there seem to only be two paths for a black teen to take: criminal or athlete. Many of these teens aspire to be sports stars and depend on nothing else because there is nothing else. Some may become the superstars they hope to be or they fall into ruin as Boobie Miles, Derric Evans, and Gary Edwards
Jeffers, N. (n.d.). Training youths for a sound future in athletics. Intensity Magazine. Retrieved March 17, 2004, from http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/inmag51.htm
As an industry, sports have also created a relatively small, elite class of black multimillionaires. But these black players and their outrageous salaries, together with the media and advertising endorsements, have created the impression among many lower-income blacks that there are unlimited opportunities on the playing field. The result, say experts, is an obsession with sports among many young African-American males often at the expense of the more traditional, if less glamorous, route to upward mobility: education. "There is an overemphasis on sports in the black community, and too many black students are putting all their eggs in one basket," says Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint. (www.usnews.com/usnews/Febissue/sports.htm)
To be a great a running back first he would have to study the playbook. The playbook is a very important part of football or else he wouldn’t know what to do. The playbook is a notebook that the players get from their coach so they will know their assignment. If the players remember the play then he would be successful when the game come and won’t have any problem with the plays. That’s the first step of being a great running back.
One of the most important thing in basketball is the ability to play games and practicing as a team. When a person practices they gain the ability to win games but when they don’t practice they are more likely to lose there games because they are not as experienced as if they did practice. The more experience a player has the more successful they are gonna be out on the court compared to a player who never practices with there team will not be as successful to win games. No matter what sport a person plays there is always room for improvement and that leads to my next topic about the effects of practicing for basketball and how it can effect the skill level of the player.
The athlete and really the sport overall I chose to focus on throughout the course of this paper is the football player and the mindset in which he operates, while in what seems to become his natural environment and other factors which may alter that mindset in a positive or negative way. Having experience as a football player from my youth until present day helps to really analyze the mindset and thinking of this specific athlete and express through experiences my thoughts and feelings concerning my research found. Paul Bear Bryant a very well-known and respected coach for many years in the college football world once said, “When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.” This quote is an excellent example of football psychology and the type of thinking a football player must have, which is also helpful to have off the field. Mistakes are going to happen, learn from them and get better. Football is all about training the mind, which alters the behavior on the field.
When competing in a sport, the performance of the athlete can be compromised if he or she doesn’t maintain a healthy lifestyle. While staying physically fit and exercising are important in any athlete’s daily routine, there are other factors to determine a “healthy” lifestyle. Similarly, an athlete should practice good sportsmanship while competing. Respect for a fellow athlete is the root of every great athlete. In order to perform well at any sport, an athlete has to enjoy the game. Take soccer for instance, if a soccer player does not enjoy playing soccer, then it will be significantly harder to perform at his or her best. Along with enjoying and respecting the sport, an athlete has to have the mindset of a champion. Thinking like a perfect athlete will provide the motivation and determination to achieve the goals of a perfect athlete. Consider Bruce Lee, a world renown martial artist and fighter. Lee is known as one of the greatest martial artist in history and is respected for his methods. “If you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life”, Bruce stated. “It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.” Bruce Lee tells how the proper mindset is
Sport should be about the recognition of natural talent. Yet performance enhancing drugs have the power to overcome differences in natural talent. The great value of sport teaches us the difference between winning and striving for superiority, the enhanced but much harder goal. More importantly, sport teaches us how to handle failure; to get up and try again when we lose. When performance enhancing comes into play that ruins the whole concept of one of the greatest lessons of life that if you fall you get up and try again. That you have to work hard to get what and where you want to be in life.