Guts and Glory on Friday Nights

Guts and Glory on Friday Nights


Friday nights is typically the favorite night of the week for all high school kids, and quite frankly, the favorite night for most adults as well. We look forward to Friday nights because on Friday nights, the work week or school week has ended. The weekend is a little time for rest and relaxation, a time to let loose and celebrate. For me however, my Friday nights were much more than getting a couple days off from school. My Friday nights started in the locker room shortly after school and were filled with grid iron: blood, sweat, and a few tears.
During my senior year, there was a game with a cross town rival and I was always hyped up and mentally prepared for the cross town rivals they were the Warren Central Dragons. This particular school always did something to our school right before we were playing them in a game. This particular game, they took week killer and killed the grass to where it burned their school initials on the 50 yard line of our field. So I was fired up and ready to get revenge in this game. The whole team was fired up.
As a defensive lineman, nose guard was my position on my high school football team. I was lined up straight across from the ball. My job was to try and tackle who ever had the ball, but at the very least, stop the run up the middle. There is not a lot of glory when you are a lineman whether it is defensive or offensive. The glory goes to the quarterbacks, the running backs and the receivers. They are the players that always have the ball and make all of the scores. The guts however, come from the lineman. They do the hitting, the clashing, the tackling and most of the bleeding.
This night was pretty typical from the start. We huddle in to our team meeting, going over last minute play instructions, before we file out of the locker room strutting to the field. I was one of four captains that night so the four of us arms locked together to meet the officials and the captains for the Dragons at mid field. We knew the night would be good as we won the toss. We elected to defer the ball to the Dragons and we would receive the kick off at the beginning of the second half. We held them scoreless on their first possession and then we took over the ball. As the first half advanced, we held them scoreless and we were up 21 to 0 personally I thought that we should be up even more I wanted to beat them as bad as we possibly could with no mercy considering what they did to our field.
After half time, we rolled back out to the field to start our usual warm up drills so we could put this team away for the season. The third quarter we started strong and again held them scoreless, but we scored two more touchdowns to end the quarter 35 to 0. It was about midway thru the fourth quarter, we were all getting a little tired and sluggish. The sound of helmets banging together, and pads and equipment hitting together had just become a buzz. The grunting of the players, the yelling and cheering of the fans, I had just tuned out. I was completely zoned in on the football. About that time, the football was stripped from the Dragons running back and it fell to the ground about two feet from me. As focused as I was, I scooped the ball up and tucked it under my arms. I ran as fast and as hard as I could, my heart was racing and sweat was dripping down into my eyes, never looking back until I had reached the end zone. I looked around in disbelief as there were no penalty flags on the ground. I had scored my first touchdown ever.
It probably seems like not such a big deal because most teams have several players who score touchdowns all of the time. But when one considers the guts and the glory, the linemen usually have all of the guts and none of the glory. Defensive players play most all of their football careers and never actually touch a football. That night during that game, I had both guts and glory and the most memorable night of my high school football career.

By: Ben Spencere