NIGHT BEFORE THE FIRST GAME
By mark rogers
August 27, 2008
Having played through nine football seasons in my life time (Grade 6 - 2nd year at ACU) I've had the "night before the first game" experience nine times.
Most Pop Warner athletes don't have pre-game rituals or crazy superstitions that they MUST do or they just know they'll break their leg or miss a potentially game-winning tackle.
However, that all changes when you start playing games that mean something...that the whole city/region is going to be talking about...when there's real pressure.
Beginning my junior year in high school at Plano Senior High, every Thursday night my parents would take me to a Chinese food restaurant and I would order Sweet & Sour Pork. Probably not what I would eat today if I was still playing football, but when you're 16 you can eat anything.
After the meal I would drive my 1984 Chevy Blazer up to the field house for our mandatory film session with the coaches. We'd all show up in basketball shorts and flip flops with Slurpees or some other huge beverage from 7-11.
We'd go over the main keys to what we had practiced all week and maybe watch a motivational video the coaches had put together. It was all business on Thursday nights. The coaches would leave and we'd have a team meeting where various team leaders would say something about the next day's game.
I'd go home, go straight to my room and put in the Rudy soundtrack. I'd listen to the whole song they play at the end of the movie when Rudy gets in and makes a tackle. During the song I would visualize the game...formations, splits, pursuit, audibles, stunts.
Then I would try to go straight to sleep...about 9:30 PM. It was always tough to sleep on Thursday nights.
Waking up on game day just felt different than any other day. It's like when you wake up the morning of your birthday or Christmas...something is just different. Your brain is somewhere else all day.
It was really hard to pay attention in class, too (sorry parents). You didn't smile as much. There was no clowning around. It was all business. It was game day.
A bunch of the guys would come to my house and we'd have some type of noodles at around 2 PM and watch a little more film before heading up to the field house to get taped.
I had a few rituals, too. I HAD to eat a Power Bar on the bus on the way to the stadium. I HAD to have the head trainer tape my ankles. I would ALWAYS take a short nap using my pads as a pillow before we had to suit up for warm-ups. I ALWAYS put my pads on in the same order. There were some others, too, but I'm not at liberty to discuss them...
Thousands of football players around the Big Country will go through something like this tonight, tomorrow or Friday.
Some will experience this for the first time. Others will fall into their old routine from last year or the year before (or for the Villanueva brothers the last ten years). But everybody gets to start over. Everybody gets a clean slate. Everybody is as ready as you can get.
So here's a message to all the gridiron warriors out there: Try to get some sleep over the next few days, and we'll see you when the dust settles sometime in December. Good luck...
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