Football

Game Seven:

Minnesota Moorehead. School mascot? A potato. That's right I said "a potato". They called themselves the Spuds. Nick for a potato.

Don't be fooled. We had long since stopped making fun of that. It probably made them play harder and they were the hardest hitting team we played year in and year out. They were the only team that could play that kind of ball with us.
I got an honorable mention from coach for this game but Warren Williams earned D-player.

We won 11-0 but the coach says he was just protecting the lead and I believe it as our offensive plays were very conservative in nature. The play of note for me came on one of our second half punts.

I was the right release man for punt team and for those who do not know what that is, it is the release mans job to get down field and tackle the oppositions receiver. The Moorehead player responsible for holding me up had been doing a great job on me and I was having no success at all.
The ball was snapped, and as usual this game I was delayed at the line of scrimmage and after escaping this block I of course took off after the ball only too see a second Spud drawing a bead on me. I was sick of having this trouble and at about 10 yards from him I accelerated and lowered my head. We slammed together with this incredible explosion of noise, the kind of hit where you blank out for a second and you see stars. I glanced off and kept going getting close to the ball carrier but he was taken down before I got there.

My eyes became blurry and I became aware of the excruciating pain in my nose. A moment later my lips hurt as well and my helmet was loose. I checked the straps to make sure they were still on. Then I tasted it. The salt oily flavor of blood. I stuck my padded hand up to my face and sure enough I was bleeding from my nose and lips . My ears were ringing from the noise of the contact and I....was....mad. I played on getting 6 or 7 total tackles that game. I knew I had contributed but I was not really satisfied with my performance. Forget that we were playing our number one rival. I wanted to do much better than that. But they were a great team and this was only the second time in our school history we had beaten them which was a good achievement.

It took me all week after the game to figure out why my helmet fit was so sloppy . The hit was so violent that it had spread the face guard out slamming it back into my face with enough force to crack bone. Now to give you an idea how tough a face guard is, it is made out of 3\8 inch plastic coated stainless steel welded together in a grid depending on how much protection you want from 1 bar across the face at about lip level to mine which was the strongest at 3 bars across, reinforced with one down the middle. This sucker was mashed out at least one inch wider than before the hit. I replaced the face guard.

It takes a lot to impress me but this little event impressed me. It made me realize that I was hitting very hard. Also broke my nose. Pretty cool.

As for the game it was just one more down the road for us. Not a win to be taken lightly but we had our eyes on another prize.

At the end of the game I gave thanks to God