Powerful Moment

            June 27, 2013 will be a date I will never forget. I was on the football team for my High school and was a pretty solid player. In the summers we would play in “7 on 7” games to help keep us in shape and football ready when the season came around in the fall. On this day we held one of our games at our home field. We were doing pretty well scoring points and had the lead when one play would change the rest of my life. I ran a streak route, which is just running straight deep, down the sideline trying to sprint by the corner hearing nothing but the wind howling behind me focused on nothing but the quarterback and the ball. When the quarterback launched the ball in the air to me the cornerback and I leaped soaring in the air to grab the ball, but the ball went to far in front of us making it uncatchable. Now knowing I’m unable to catch the ball I try to land safely on the ground, but my leg was caught in between the defenders legs making me unable to land on my feet and instead I fall hitting the ground with great force landing on my right shoulder. As soon as I landed I felt my collarbone snap in my body. I paused for a few seconds on the ground saying to myself “It’s not serious. You didn’t break anything.” But I was wrong. Slowly getting up on my feet I tried to feel my right collarbone with my left hand and I knew right then it was bad. I could feel part of the bone sticking out of my body and my heart just dropped knowing this was a serious injury. Walking off the field saying every curse word you could think of not because of the pain, but because of the thought that I possibly won’t be able to play football my senior year. All the years of hard work, the long hours after school, practicing trying to get better aiming for one goal. To play on those Friday nights. All of those hopes and dreams gone in an instance. My thoughts weren’t in a good place at the time. I grabbed my stuff with my good arm and headed off the field to my mom who was just giving me this worried/scared stare. She knew what I broke because it wasn’t the first time this has happened to me. Saying only a few words to her we went to the car and drove to the hospital. When we finally got to a room and took x-rays the doctor told me that I had shattered my collarbone in 3 pieces. My mom was in shock thinking how bad of a break it was and the doctor told me I would need surgery to repair it which required putting a metal plate and 12 screws to hold my collarbone together. I didn’t care about that though. All I cared about was the recovery time and when I’d be able to play football again. The doctor was unsure, but he said the worst thing that he could possibly say to me, “Don’t plan on playing this year.”