Here is my first english paper of the year. I hope You all enjoy.
Here Comes The Big Men
It was the spring of that tremendous year. The father of one of my friends decided to come to my high school and see if we wanted to start a rugby team. At first this seemed like a crazy idea because I always did my best to keep from getting hurt, and rugby was defiantly not the sport for that. Though it was intimidating, I was excited about it because it looked like a lot of fun so I signed up.
That day when I got home I could not wait to tell my parents that I was going to play a sport. They thought it would be a great idea to do something physically demanding. What I had failed to tell them was that it wasn’t track or baseball that I wanted to do, it was rugby. When they found that out they almost screamed. The thing they were so worried about was that I had just gotten my braces off and now I wanted to go play a sport where people get their teeth knocked out all of the time. Though they were worried, they decided to let me play.
We started training the very next week, that’s when I found out that it was not very easy to play. On television rugby looks like a sport where two huge groups of guys get together and beat the heck out of each other to get the ball. I did not know that the list of rules for this sport was endless. The rules weren’t the only thing that got me, the physical fitness that it takes to play this sport is tremendous. Our team consisted 16 people of which more than half were band nerds that means a whole lot of people that were out of shape.
We had a couple of skinny fast guys and a few big guys, but I was by far the biggest. My coach’s nick name was “Rod Buster” because his profession was bending and fitting together the rebar that made a buildings basic structure. He was one of the biggest guys I have ever seen, his hands were literally the size of fifty pound sledge hammers. He ran us and sculpted us into a great team. We ran and did drills for about a month when he decided that it was time to start playing games. At first the games seemed a little difficult but I knew I was made to play. My team did really well against all of the teams around us so my coach decided to take us to Nash Bash.
Nash Bash is a yearly tournament where the best rugby teams from all around Tennessee meet in Nashville and play. In the tournament a team would play three progressively harder games to see who was the best. Since we were new I thought the officials would put us up against new teams, I have never been more wrong. The first team was from the same conference that my team was from so we had already played them. That game was a little difficult but we still won. It was the second round that this whole story is about.
At this point a lot of my team was exhausted from the first game. A couple of guys were being hardcore jerks telling us that we had not played to our fullest potential and that we were too lazy to be playing rugby. I don’t know if it was the extreme heat or that statement but I was getting really hot under the collar. While we had our two hour rest, it began to rain.
By the time we got back to the field it had stopped raining but the ground was saturated with the rain. While we were doing our stretches we talked about the team that awaited us. None of us had any idea who we were playing so all we could do was wait.
In the middle of our stretches we all felt the ground rumble. We did not know what the heck was happening. The rumbling was getting harder and harder, closer and closer when all at once my whole team looked up and one of my friends said, “Here comes the big men.” that was an understatement.
These guys were the size of 150 year old trees. I am six feet two inches tall and weigh about 260 pounds, but their legs were bigger then me. This team had won state three times in a row previous to this season. I knew from that point that it was going to be a painful game. The whistle was blown and here came the opening kick. As soon as one of my teammates got the ball he threw it to me because he was afraid of getting hurt. This was the same guy who early that day was telling me to put in 110 percent and here he was throwing me the ball. From then on I knew I was going to have handle this game on my own.
I got the ball and took of running with my shoulder lowered I rammed into my opponents gut. It did not phase him one bit, I basically bounced off his stomach and landed on the ground. Throughout that whole game I was literally the only person who took the ball in heavy traffic and I know I was the only one trying to tackle the other people. I was covered in mud and was getting really frustrated with the rest of my team because they weren’t playing like a team. All I could smell was sweat and nasty mud when I was on the bottom of a pile of four 300 pound guys and I realized that rugby wasn’t for winning, rugby was for fun. If you look at all of the great teams you will see that they aren’t out there to beat the other team, they are there to have fun playing an awesome sport with all of their closest friends. If a person goes out on the field with a bad attitude and nothing but hatred towards the other team, they are not going to get anything accomplished. I guess that can be true for real life. This game was a huge eye opener.
It was the spring of that tremendous year. The father of one of my friends decided to come to my high school and see if we wanted to start a rugby team. At first this seemed like a crazy idea because I always did my best to keep from getting hurt, and rugby was defiantly not the sport for that. Though it was intimidating, I was excited about it because it looked like a lot of fun so I signed up.
That day when I got home I could not wait to tell my parents that I was going to play a sport. They thought it would be a great idea to do something physically demanding. What I had failed to tell them was that it wasn’t track or baseball that I wanted to do, it was rugby. When they found that out they almost screamed. The thing they were so worried about was that I had just gotten my braces off and now I wanted to go play a sport where people get their teeth knocked out all of the time. Though they were worried, they decided to let me play.
We started training the very next week, that’s when I found out that it was not very easy to play. On television rugby looks like a sport where two huge groups of guys get together and beat the heck out of each other to get the ball. I did not know that the list of rules for this sport was endless. The rules weren’t the only thing that got me, the physical fitness that it takes to play this sport is tremendous. Our team consisted 16 people of which more than half were band nerds that means a whole lot of people that were out of shape.
We had a couple of skinny fast guys and a few big guys, but I was by far the biggest. My coach’s nick name was “Rod Buster” because his profession was bending and fitting together the rebar that made a buildings basic structure. He was one of the biggest guys I have ever seen, his hands were literally the size of fifty pound sledge hammers. He ran us and sculpted us into a great team. We ran and did drills for about a month when he decided that it was time to start playing games. At first the games seemed a little difficult but I knew I was made to play. My team did really well against all of the teams around us so my coach decided to take us to Nash Bash.
Nash Bash is a yearly tournament where the best rugby teams from all around Tennessee meet in Nashville and play. In the tournament a team would play three progressively harder games to see who was the best. Since we were new I thought the officials would put us up against new teams, I have never been more wrong. The first team was from the same conference that my team was from so we had already played them. That game was a little difficult but we still won. It was the second round that this whole story is about.
At this point a lot of my team was exhausted from the first game. A couple of guys were being hardcore jerks telling us that we had not played to our fullest potential and that we were too lazy to be playing rugby. I don’t know if it was the extreme heat or that statement but I was getting really hot under the collar. While we had our two hour rest, it began to rain.
By the time we got back to the field it had stopped raining but the ground was saturated with the rain. While we were doing our stretches we talked about the team that awaited us. None of us had any idea who we were playing so all we could do was wait.
In the middle of our stretches we all felt the ground rumble. We did not know what the heck was happening. The rumbling was getting harder and harder, closer and closer when all at once my whole team looked up and one of my friends said, “Here comes the big men.” that was an understatement.
These guys were the size of 150 year old trees. I am six feet two inches tall and weigh about 260 pounds, but their legs were bigger then me. This team had won state three times in a row previous to this season. I knew from that point that it was going to be a painful game. The whistle was blown and here came the opening kick. As soon as one of my teammates got the ball he threw it to me because he was afraid of getting hurt. This was the same guy who early that day was telling me to put in 110 percent and here he was throwing me the ball. From then on I knew I was going to have handle this game on my own.
I got the ball and took of running with my shoulder lowered I rammed into my opponents gut. It did not phase him one bit, I basically bounced off his stomach and landed on the ground. Throughout that whole game I was literally the only person who took the ball in heavy traffic and I know I was the only one trying to tackle the other people. I was covered in mud and was getting really frustrated with the rest of my team because they weren’t playing like a team. All I could smell was sweat and nasty mud when I was on the bottom of a pile of four 300 pound guys and I realized that rugby wasn’t for winning, rugby was for fun. If you look at all of the great teams you will see that they aren’t out there to beat the other team, they are there to have fun playing an awesome sport with all of their closest friends. If a person goes out on the field with a bad attitude and nothing but hatred towards the other team, they are not going to get anything accomplished. I guess that can be true for real life. This game was a huge eye opener.