Big Injuries from the Tiniest of Stature

                Back in the day, about three years ago, I was a real football star. I played every position on the field, no matter of size or skill, I did it all. I was on the Viewmont Bantam C-Team, in other words, I played for a team that won no games at all. That’s right zero. Though normally, I don’t tell people that. I tell them that I was a football star who played every position, because if I didn’t, my injury story would not be as awesome. This is my story of the time my soon-to-be football career came crashing down leaving me with a career ending injury that changed my life…and my foot.

                I was just barely in junior high and for years and years I had wanted to play football but never found myself having the courage to sign up, until now. I signed up for football not knowing what to expect, not knowing what I would get myself into. I had played competition sports before like baseball, basketball, and swimming, but never a contact sport. This was the year I decided that I was going to play football and prove to all the other kids, who had played up to five years already, that I was worth playing with.

                I got to practice the first day and it was one of the hardest things I have ever done. The coaches sort of split up the boys into veterans and new recruits, and for some reason the coaches thought that I had played in the years before. This mix up put me in a bad position where I had no idea what to do and everybody was watching me and the skills they thought I had. After that first play, it was clear to all that I was an extreme newbie, and I knew it was going to be a long year, yet I still did not know how bad it was really going to become.

                We were a couple games into the season and I had built up my knowledge of the game a bit but my skills remained the same as they were on the first day. I sucked at football. I had no defined position, I couldn’t really play any one well, and I got maximum playing time because we only had thirteen kids in which eleven are playing constantly. We were all at practice, this time it was hitting drills. I also hated to hit, or get hit, and it made no sense to me. Why would you send two kids running full speed at each other? Something bad was bound to happen. Hitting drills seemed more like a strength test and defined your status as a football player rather than a drill for learning how to play the game better.  Since this was my first year at football I had no say, so I simply shut my mouth and followed along.

                We had to lines facing away from each other about twenty yards apart. The coaches would yell, “GO!” and the two kids at the front of the lines would charge at each other trying to knock the other down. In the line we would all count the amount of kids in front of us, and then count the same number of kids in the other line to see who we were matched up with. I counted and found myself paired with the smallest kid on the football team. This would have been fine with me except for some reason that kid and I had beef with each other. No matter if he was practicing holding onto the ball while being tackled, that kid would drop his shoulder and hit me as hard as he could, with his little man syndrome (when the person is so small that he/she has to make up for it with big attitude) was shining through.

                I got to the front of the line still not knowing what to do or how I was going to handle this kid, who I knew would do everything in his power to take me down. I got ready and the coaches yelled for us to commence. I started running and I saw the kid running at me, though I had to look down quite a bit. About four feet before we made contact, I dropped my shoulder expecting the other kid to do the same. As I was soaring shoulder first towards the kid, I saw him sidestep, yet still running. I saw him stick out his left foot and felt his cleats dig into the back of my Achilles’ tendon. I continued to fall forward expecting to hit the kid but instead hit the ground. I felt the back of my leg explode with pain as the kid’s cleat kept my right heel pinned flat against the ground while the rest of my body continued forward.

                The play ended and the coaches came running over hearing my groans of pain. They hurriedly tried to figure out what was wrong as I writhed on the ground. Through gritted teeth I choked out that my right foot felt as if it had been ripped off. They pulled off my helmet and elevated my right foot on a ball bag. As I sat there with my hands pressed against my skull trying to deal with the immense amount of pain I heard them say, “Crap! We cannot afford to be losing kids!” but I thought I wasn’t much of a help anyway, they wouldn’t miss me.

                The coaches had me wait until my dad came to pick me up, and when he got there I was helped off the field by two coaches with my right foot completely off the ground. From the field my dad drove my straight to the emergency room, in which I got in almost immediately skipping the long waiting line for the second time in my life. I got into the doctor’s office and he immediately x-rayed my foot. By this time the pain became dull but came throbbing back in bursts of agony.

The doctor came back after a period of about five minutes and posted the x-rays on the back light. He turned the backlight on and I could tell something was not right with my foot. I saw the tendon attached to my heel looked extremely large because of swelling and looked like it had splintered apart. The doctor then told me that I had ruptured my Achilles tendon and that in this particular case he was not able to perform surgery on my foot. He explained how the tendon had pulled apart in the weirdest of places yet not in the right place to be considered torn. He said that if I had torn it, the tendon would be a lot easier and quicker to heal. He then went out of the office and returned with a boot that looked like something out of a science fiction movie. He also wrote out a prescription for a pain medication and explained how I would have to take the medication and wear the boot for up to eight months.

After I heard this news, I thought my life was over. School was starting in two months and I would be walking around in a boot for eight months. I knew that kid that had done this was reveling in his victory but I knew it would be short lived. Get it, short lived? I knew that I would eventually have to face the kid again and if he said any nasty comment or tried to belittle me I would just look straight, almost eight inches above his head, and act all confused like I didn’t know where his voice was coming from or ask if he represented the lollypop guild. Through all this though, I knew I was never any good at football and I knew because of this injury that my football career would halt here.