Personal Narrative: My Journey To The Football Field

In hindsight, I consider myself lucky to have been through so much in high school, as adversity built my resilience to the point that I could take these calamities in stride. I had formed the ability to emotionally detach myself from events at home, allowing me to continue to perform well here at the Academy. In the words of my mother when we first argued about whether or not it would be necessary for me to resign from the Academy to help at home, “You gave us all six years of your life to care for them, you can have four years to care for yourself.” My mom knew that if she had informed me of my grandfather’s condition during Beast, I would have been home within 48 hours. My mother forbade me from coming home during my first semester, so as

As a former soccer player who transitioned to football due to injuries, I was one of few who had not been playing on the same team since third grade. However, since I was a kicker, the lack of experience did not harm my performance on the field. I only had to work harder than everybody else, especially as a second-year, special-teams-only player, when I was off the field. The culture of a football is vastly different than that of a soccer team. I played for a competitive travel soccer club, so everybody there had the passion and dedication to the game comparable to that of a college athlete. Joining a football team that had no try outs and did not make cuts due to the need for more players, this transition was a culture

The ultimate test of my ability to dedicate myself to something, persevere through challenges, and show my intestinal fortitude and resiliency was finally taking place (King & Rothstein, 2010). College coaches were no more excited to meet one of their recruits on crutches than DoDMERB was to see my packet come across their desk when I initially applied to West Point. I knew that I had to “show what I was made of” for my college experience to go the way I had hoped. After several months of intense rehab and pushing my knee beyond the limits my doctor’s recommended, I was fully cleared – in April. The estimated up to nine month recovery that I had planned on was now complete in only three and a half. Following those three and a half months, I put that same level of dedication into the team. I was at every morning lift and had the second highest attendance percentage on the team for off season workouts and lifts. I was second only because I also had a full time job during the summer, causing me to drop from first place. This hard work did not go unnoticed by my teammates. The freshman, especially, noticed how rapidly I became more than just their kicker; I was becoming one of the team leaders. I was later selected as one of our rotating captains. For a kicker to be selected by his teammates as a captain is rare, and this showed me how much those around