On that last Friday night of the season, we walked into the locker rooms as a team. Win or lose, it didn’t matter–we are a team. However, it wasn’t always like this.

 It was a long season of anger, sadness, and soreness. We all were focused on the wrong thing–we focused on winning. I know this may sound crazy, but winning isn’t the main goal for sports. The main goal of athletes is to have fun playing the game they love. It took us until two weeks before the end of the season, but once we realized this, we played better, had fun, and created a family-like bond.

Throughout the whole season, we never really felt like an actual team. We all blamed each other for our losses, blamed the coaches, anything other than our own play. During our warmups at Monday’s practice after a blowout loss, our streak becoming 0-6 losses, I got tired of it. I didn’t want to lose the love for the game I had because we were losing. I walked up to our huddle and said, “Yo guys, honestly I’m done getting mad and sad after losses. We’re a young team and I’m not expecting to win anymore. All I ask of you guys is to give it your best shot and have fun.” Right when those words came out of my mouth, our season was in for a change. 

First game of October: look good, play good, pink out. We were about to play Canterbury, who won the conference championship. I gathered the team to tell them, “Guys, we have nothing to lose, play this game like it’s your last.” We got out on the field for our first drive of the game, I noticed that we were actually driving down the field. We hadn’t scored a point since the first game of the season.

 I saw an opening in the line, and I dashed 53 yards to the endzone. For the first time all season, I was having fun. I saw my whole offense running towards me screaming, and honestly, that moment was the best of the season. Everybody was enjoying the game. We lost 35-16, but it didn’t matter to us. We knew we had the most fun this whole year, and that was enough for us.

Friday night lights: last game of the season. We were playing SFCA, and once again, we just had fun. We were playing our best game of the season; we were down 6 at halftime, 14-8. Typically, we’d be upset that we were losing and blame one another. Instead, we came together as a family and finished the game with the same goal as the start of the game: to have fun. 

Once again, we lost 35-22. Of course, we were a little down because we didn’t win our last game of the year. However, we were just happy with the bond we created within two weeks, the memories made, and the fact that we had to persevere through quitters, injuries, and outside influences. The 15 players that stayed and played the whole season were able to experience the good moments of the season. 

People come up to me and ask, “Why didn’t you quit?” or say, “Your season sucked, the team can’t win a game.” They won’t ever know the bond that was built, the friendships that were created, the jokes right before the games, or the feeling of taking off your pads for the last time. I just tell those people, “I don’t quit, and I couldn’t quit on those guys. They’re my family, and I wouldn’t want them to quit on me. Yeah, we didn’t win, but I had more fun in the last two weeks of the season than doing anything else.” We persevered as a family and had zero regrets. Honestly, I can’t wait until next year to enjoy another season with my family.