Canton High School Practice Field, 1985
I am a freshman playing left guard on offense for the Sharon Eagles JV squad. Despite a year of intense weightlifting, I can’t be more than a pound over 155, soaking wet. I’m tiny for the line – even one as undersized as this one, made up of 14- and 15-year-olds not yet large or strong enough for varsity. In September, the woods around us shimmer with heat. It must be 90 degrees and our pads droop, helmets slide down heavily, furrowing our brows, darkening our eyes in shadow. On days like this you don’t win. You endure. It’s a scrimmage, so the coaches prowl the field with whistles and clipboards, stepping into huddles, stopping plays, pulling one kid out, putting in another. We are interchangeable parts, pushed and pulled into different places, filling holes, gaps and passing lanes, pulled up from a pile by the shoulder pads, yanked back into the huddle to be set up once more, like dominoes.
“Okay,” my father says, looking down at his clipboard. “Forty-six counter,” a misdirection play in which the ball is faked to the left side of the line and every man but one blocks down in that direction to draw the defense away from the running lane before the halfback cuts back to where the tackle on that side has crossed the line, unblocked. At the same time, the left guard pulls his way and is the one man, other than the runner, heading toward the hole as the defensive tackle sprints across, thinking he has a clear shot at the ball carrier. If things work, if the tackle is slow to recognize the counter-action and meet the blocker coming at him square, or if he simply isn’t strong enough to take on the block, the guard clears him out, “blows him up.” It’s a sure five yards, more if the linebackers bite on the fake.
It works. At the snap of the ball I stay low, winging my right arm back as I step out, turn and fire off in one motion, exploding to my right as everyone goes left and I see the tackle come across, almost straight up and down. When I hit him I can barely feel it in my shoulder pads and arms. His legs come up. His arms fly out. He folds at the middle and I drive him through the air several feet before we hit the hard-packed dirt of the field.
The breath comes out of him. “Unh,” he says. “Unh.”
I wasn’t ever the type of kid to celebrate a thing like that. Often, I’d help the player up as if to say, “Nothing personal. It’s just my job. Sorry about that.”
But this time as I climb to my feet and the tackle rolls over to his stomach, shaking the cobwebs from his head, slowly rising to his knees, pushing himself up with his arms, I see a shock of red hair peeking out beneath his helmet, and in white block letters on a green jersey, I read, KOZAK.
“Nice hit,” my father says, barely looking up from his clipboard. “Okay, next play.”
“Dad,” I say. “I mean, Coach. Let’s run it again.” And for once I’m not angry or afraid. “Run it again.” I feel strong. I feel joy. And I know I am smiling.
Originally published on Heart of a Man
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