The Final Game

It’s going right, I thought. Sure enough, the running back went in motion and the ball was snapped.

It was the football sectional championship in 2009, my senior year. My team, the NorthWood Panthers, was facing the Jimtown Jimmies, our archrival. We were looking to make ourselves back-to-back 3A Sectional 18 champs. We were also out for revenge as we had fallen to the Jimmies in overtime the first game of the season.

As the running back went in motion, I began to float over to the play side from my strong safety position. Just as I had been expecting, the quarterback handed off. I picked up speed as I headed toward the line of scrimmage. Running out of room along the sideline, the back decided to cut up field, and that was when I made my move.

I braced my body for impact as I hurled all 190 pounds of myself at the ball carrier. He had seen me coming, and accelerated towards me, lowering his body to protect against the oncoming blow. We collided with a tremendous crash, both of us dropping straight to the ground.

“Nice hit, John!” I heard my teammates yelling. “You messed him up!”

I wanted to jump up and celebrate the play with my teammates, but all I could think about was the white-hot pain that had engulfed my left shoulder.

Our free safety, my best friend, ran up to congratulate me, but stopped when he noticed the pain that must have been etched across my face.

“Are you alright, man?” he asked.

I looked at him and said matter-of-factly, “I just dislocated my shoulder.”

As the clock expired on the first quarter, we ran off the field to get some water and have a short meeting with our coaches. The first thing I did was walk over to my defensive backs coach.

“I can’t move my arm,” I told him. I also told him that, as a two-way starter and team captain, there was no way I was coming out of this game. He understood completely and told me to do the best that I could. I avoided our athletic trainer and headed back onto the field, asking a teammate to strap up my helmet on the left side, as I could not raise my arm.

Two plays later, it was third down and Jimtown had the ball inside our 20-yard line. The game was still scoreless, and a stop here would be huge.

The quarterback handed off to the same running back, off the right side of our defense once again. I would later learn that the running back had felt the effects of our collision as well, and this would be his last carry of the game.

But none of that mattered at this instant. Expecting a run, I had inched up to the line of scrimmage. As I saw the running back take the handoff, I stormed into the backfield, grabbing the runner with my good right arm. As my left arm hung limply at my side, I wrapped myself around him and brought him to the ground behind the line of scrimmage, giving us that badly needed stop.

As my teammates once again began to celebrate, I took my time getting up as the fire in my shoulder had intensified with that last hit.

By this time the coaches had noticed my injury, and called me off the field instead of allowing me to join the offensive huddle, where I was the tight end. Our trainer met me as I jogged off the field, and began to make his preliminary diagnosis.

After a short examination, he determined that it was not dislocated, but as to the extent of other damage he could not be sure. Following a short dispute, he allowed me to finish the half, promising to perform a further examination at halftime.

We battled hard throughout the second quarter, and headed into halftime down 7-0.

In the locker room, the trainer had me take off my shoulder pads which was, in itself, a task. Almost every test he had me perform resulted in extreme pain filling my entire arm.

 “There is too much pain for me to get an accurate diagnosis at this point,” he told me. I was given the OK to play as much as my pain threshold allowed me.

Given the game situation, and the fact that I have been blessed with an extremely high tolerance for pain, I went and told the coaches that I was good to go for the second half.

I fought as hard as I could in the second half, making tackles and blocks with only one arm. The pain had receded from its initial intensity, but was still agonizing. Numbness had also developed, stretching from my neck to the tips of my fingers.

The game went back and forth, as we tied it with a touchdown, and then Jimtown went up by a field goal that would prove to be the decisive margin.

As the clock ticked down to zero, I began to cry, out of pain, frustration, and the realization that I had just played my last down of high school football. I had truly left it all on the field. I simply didn’t have any left to give. This knowledge was of little comfort to me.

As I stood on the field crying with my teammates, my brothers, one of our assistant coaches came up to me.

“John, I just want to thank you for your effort tonight. That was one of the best displays of heart I have ever seen. I know you’re hurt and you didn’t have much left at the end, but all you had to give is still out there. So thank you.”

Although I only managed to mumble a quick thanks through my tears, I was humbled by these words. This praise of my effort, my heart, meant more to me than a thousand people congratulating me on my skill.

After the season, basketball started although I missed the first few weeks as first my trainer, then 
another doctor, and finally an orthopedic surgeon tried to determine my injury. The final diagnosis was an extreme pinched nerve, deep in my shoulder. It resulted in constant pain and numbness for over a month, and I still get occasional pain and numbness today. However, I would gladly play that game again, injury and all, just to get one more chance to play under the Friday night lights.