That’s Coach, upper right, white shirt, red stripe.
That’s me, bottom row, black hair, glasses, fifth in from the right.
I never made it into wrestling season, but I did learn something very important from Coach during 8th grade wrestling. I wrote about it in my post http://davebosquez.com/bestill/ Sports Rule 101.
Freshman football was a different story.
My middle school football career was a lot of fun.
7th grade was a wash as I injured myself on a friends homemade dirt bike. But that’s another story, it’s a good one!
8th grade was fun but regrettably forgettable.
9th grade was a blast!
At the start of the season and after conditioning for a few days Coach had us line up so that he could assign positions.
He started down on the end of the line and as he moved from player to player he would say, “Michael, you’re a guard”, “so and so, you’re a receiver” and so on down the line. Not much to it.
When he got to me he had a big smile on his face and very emphatically he states, “Bosquez! you’re and animal, you’re on defense!” and hits me on my shoulder pad as I go runnin’ over to the defensive squad.
I loved playing football.Â
I was able to play all season and was the starting strong safety.
My main task as coached was, “maintain the edge, no one gets out side of you, you get the edge and turn everything back into the middle or come up and make the tackle.”
The second thing I was taught, “go to the ball!”
Everything was going good that year. I had a sack one game, recovered an on side kick in another. And no one got the edge.
Except… Â Â Â Â Â that one guy.
The opposing team had a trick play. We knew it. I practiced against it. They ran it one time. I fell for it. The play was for the receiver to run off the field as an extra player, except it was motion and at the last second before he was off the field he would turn up field to receive a pass.
I can still see all the coaches screaming at me when the guy went towards the sideline and shot up field.
Needless to say I got yanked.
Then there was the time I had a running back trying to get the edge, he didn’t, he couldn’t get around me, so I just kept stringing him out. A good friend of mine was playing linebacker. He was trailing and as we got near the side line he was able to put a good smack on him.
After the play Coach pulled me aside and asked why I didn’t come up and make the tackle. I don’t remember my answer but I remember feeling ‘stuck’. I didn’t want him to get around me and was afraid of missing the tackle. So I hesitated.
As an adult I call that ‘the chipmunk effect’.
When a chipmunk hustle’s across the road, he get’s to the other side. When a chipmunk rushes out, freezes, darts out and back again, he gets run over. Happens with cars and in life.
Hesitation kills! There’s an old saying, “He who hesitates is lost”.
How true, how true.
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