The struggle of a boy dealing with life's worst shortcomings. Warning, this one made my wife cry.
Coach Martin started his first year as head football coach for the Murfreesboro Comets when John was a five-foot, ten-inch sophomore weighing one hundred sixty pounds. John was a good defensive back and even better running back. Martin was looking forward to John playing his junior year a little bigger and stronger. However, life can change dramatically in one year as it did for John.
Toward the end of his sophomore year, John became sick with a rare blood disorder that attacked his body. The last day of classes, he was in the hospital for testing but gained the necessary hours to pass to eleventh grade. He missed the summer workouts and the beginning of summer practice August 1. As the bouts with the disease reoccurred, he missed the entire junior year. There was hope for him to restart school the following year, but he had a setback in August keeping him from attending school another year since he was in and out of hospitals.
John’s parents tried to tutor him so he could keep up with his education, but the required surgeries and weeks on feeding tubes prevented this option. Martin would visit him on occasion and keep him informed as to the team. He watched John’s weight decrease from 160 pounds to just over a hundred in a year and a half. John would ask questions as to his teammates and their production on the field. The answers gave him pleasure to hear while enduring the pain of his body shutting down. He was in a drug-induced coma the night the Comets won the first playoff game in team history.
In January of what was to be his senior year, the doctors found the right formula of drugs to counter the disease and John started his recovery. His weight rose to 125 pounds by prom and several of his teammates visited him for the first time in nearly two years because he was out of quarantine. His frail and bony body horrified the teammates as the true nature of the sickness became apparent. As his classmates were ready to graduate, John was trying to regain his life.
John started physical training at the beginning of May and worked on regaining his strength. He showed up the first Monday of August ready for practice with the dream of resuming his high school career. His goal was to participate in all the activities he missed due to his illness including playing football, joining clubs, and celebrating prom. The school allowed John to pick up his high school career where the disease stopped it two years before.
Martin’s first instinct was to look to integrate him on the team and then the memory of the hundred pound sick boy struck in his mind. The doctors determined he was healthy enough to play but warned his muscles and tendons are still weak and may cause other damages to his body. They encouraged him to work out with the other players and avoid any contact until his body’s core was stronger. John weighed just 140 pounds the first day of practice.
As summer past into fall, the season started and John’s weight went from 140 pounds at the beginning of August to 160 pounds by the end of September. The form of his shoulders was back as he looked stronger than when he became sick. The doctors examined him again, giving him several test and suggested he could start contact with the other boys. The timing could not have been better because the team lost the best defensive back to a broken ankle the week before.
John took to the position and Martin let him have a few plays the fifth week of the season. He did well enough to increase his playing time the following week and he dominated the weaker team. The eighth game saw him starting but Martin insisted on resting him several times during the game, which John did not like but understood the reasoning. The ninth game he played almost every defensive snap recording a safety sack with forced fumble.
The last game of the season was against their archenemy in the traditional season ending game. This year if they won, they made the playoffs and if they lose, their season was over. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, they were losing 14 to 10 and lost both running backs due to injuries. John was our third string running back and only knew about half the plays, but he was the best chance of winning. The first handoff to John he hit the hole fast and rocketed through the line. He broke to the outside made two defenders miss him. Then there was the foot race to the end zone against their fastest player and John out ran him.
The defense with John now playing both ways made them punt the ball on their next possession pinning the Comets against their own goal line. Again, John had a big run taking the ball to mid-field setting the team up to increase the lead. There was a pause in the action for an injured player and the opposing team rearranged their defense to account for John running the ball at will. Martin’s next call was a play action pass, which drew all the defenders into the box to tackle John leaving the receiver by himself twenty yards down field. Their fastest player would have required two hundred yards to catch the wide-open receiver and all they could do was watch him cross the goal line.
As the Comets defense tightened in the fourth quarter, the opposing team was unable to move the ball effectively. They tried a deep pass and John sacked their quarterback on a safety blitz. The Comets ran the clock out on the final drive by running with John. The opposing defense put nine players in the box and John still managed to move the ball for first downs. One of their linebackers dipped his head on a tackle and knocked himself out when hitting John. This was a point of contention in the year to come.
The Comets made the playoffs as the eight seed and lost a close game the first Friday of the playoffs to the team that won the state title for their lowly division. John turned nineteen the week before and several parents from the other team complained about John being over age to play. However, the state law only required the player to be in the proper grade with no mention of age of the player. There were rules about grades and grade levels and number of years attending the high school, but no set requirement of age.
The story soon became a statewide phenomenon that ignored the fact the player used bad tackling technique when hitting John. The headline read nineteen-year-old man knocks 17- year-old boy out of the game and the state legislators acted quickly on the bad press to correct the problem as told by the newspapers. The new knee-jerked law stated no player over the age of nineteen may not participate in any athletic competition, defining a nineteen-year-old as a student who turns nineteen prior to the school year starting. They did grandfather current students scheduled to play in sports the upcoming year but not the next year, which allows John to play his senior year when he turns twenty on November 1st.
However, the archenemy of the Comets started a court case to disallow John from playing and fulfilling his dream of a normal high school career. The judge agreed to hear arguments in July since practice begins in August. Martin was two hours late for his testimony in court and the judge was very angry by his tardiness.
Throwing himself on the mercy of the court, he explained with tear filled eyes, “The need for this proceeding is no longer required because the disease that delayed John’s high school career came back a week ago. This morning John lost his battle to the disease and scored his final goal in heaven.” As the tears streamed down his face, the courtroom went silent when faced with the humanity of the situation.
After the weeks of discussing nineteen-years-olds playing with high school students, the human element of the nineteen-year-old became lost. The fragility of life changed the perspective from the arguments of the day to the nineteen-year-old struggling with life with very bad breaks in it.
The judge stated under the circumstances, excused Martin’s lateness and there will be no further action by the court regarding it. The complainant moved for a dismissal and the court ended the proceedings. As Martin walked out of the courtroom, the opposing head coach rose and hugged his shoulders helping him walk out of the building.
The seniors renamed Homecoming after John with a tribute to his fight for life and the school. Senior night at the end of the season saw John’s parent walking across the field with a picture of John in his uniform. Prom had a picture of John sitting on a table and several female seniors danced with his picture. John had the credits to graduate high school even though he missed a required senior class and the school issued a diploma to his parents.
When young players complain about the demanding practices in the blazing summer heat, Martin tells them of John who wanted the pain and struggle of two-a-days but could not due to his illness. Throughout his sickness, John kept a positive view of life with a smile on his face and sought the difficulties of practice knowing it would make him a better player in the season. John’s inspirational words still line the locker room five years after his death. Each year the seniors post them and urge the younger players to heed his words.
These timeless quotations culled from the celebrated corpus of writings by W.E.B. Du Bois are presented with illuminating introductory essays by Aberjhani. Narration of the Audible book performed by Catherine Byers.
