An Adjustment No One Wants to Make

Funny how we always tell our players that football is like life. We have our ups and downs and we learn how to juggle both of them without compromising our integrity or losing our dignity. About a month ago, our starting senior middle linebacker and one of the nicest kids, went down with a severe knee injury. But it wasn’t during practice, it was in the minutes leading up to it. As he was taking his introductory lap before our stretch he had the bright idea (we know they don’t always use deductive reasoning) of leaping over a stationary garbage barrel. He landed incorrectly, nearly shattering one of the nerves in his left leg. He lay for 30 minutes with no movement at all in his leg while the entire practice halted – somehow focusing on how to stop the power play has no merit when one of your kids is screaming, “I can’t feel my leg.” To make a long story short, he wound up