When a person wakes up from a night of dreaming it is sometimes difficult to remember what the dream was about or what it means. Sometimes there are just fragments of images or sequences that usually don’t quite fit together. Actually, it isn’t too different from the dreams one has for the path life is supposed to take. So, it was with my dream of being an athlete.
After being consigned to the bench for failing to tackle the ball carrier or at least take out some of the interference blocking for him I spent the remainder of the first game feeling sorry for myself and wishing I could just vanish from view. Nobody really cared what I had done they were all too busy licking their own wounds after the disastrous defeat.
Before our next practice I had Coach Gunderson for physical education class. We were outside in our t-shirts and shorts playing touch football on the blacktop when he called me over to talk. I thought for sure he was going to ream me out for my poor play in the game, but instead he noticed I could really throw the ball and wondered if I’d ever considered playing quarterback.
When we practiced that afternoon he had me throw the ball to a few of the ends on the team. At the end of practice Coach Gunderson asked me if instead of being a running back behind Ariana and Nemovitz I’d like to be the quarterback behind Wiemeri. Although it didn’t occur to me neither team had thrown the ball even once in the first game and I probably would prefer to be the guy taking the handoff than giving it, I accepted the change.
In physical education class Coach Gunderson would tell me to have one of the guys on the team go long so I could launch a long pass, but in practice we mainly stuck to buttonhooks. In reality Wiemeri and I spent most of our time making sure we placed the ball properly between the running backs upper and lower arms.
It was a long, lonely, losing season. We never won a game and only threw the ball twice. Both were buttonhooks, where the end would take a few steps, stop and turn around to catch the ball the quarterback threw. Of the two passes thrown only one was caught and the receiver was tackled immediately for maybe a two-yard gain.
Most of the games are just images or sequences out of order floating around in my memory. The only thing that changed was the perspective since the rest of the season I spent my time on the bench. Even that isn’t totally accurate since many of the sophomore games were played on fields that didn’t have benches and so I stood along the sidelines with the rest of the players whose dreams were fading away.
At the end of the season I told Wiemeri I probably would not compete with him for the quarterback position in the following year. Then, the reality hit. Wiemeri told me he never planned to play varsity football he just went out for sophomore football to get in condition for the sport he really cared about, basketball. Besides, he figured the quarterbacks for the next two years, Spanbauer and Neubauer, were already on the varsity team, and he was right.
Oh well, my basketball skills were not too good even playing alone in the backyard, so I decided I’d try wrestling. Since everyone wrestled at a given weight, at least the monsters would be the same size.
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