Suiting Up

In small sections of this country, I am known as a preeminent stalk blocker; I can run 40 yards anywhere between 4.7 and 4.8 seconds depending on my temperament; I also have the ability to leap off the ground and over the heads of defensive backs. What is most impressive, though, is that I do all of these things between the wee hours of 3:30 and 6:30 a.m. while lying on my back during the deepest of REM slumber. Call me a fantastical dreamer.

My actual football career is less impressive than the imagined one. I cut my teeth playing ball on the blacktop parking lot of St. Mark Catholic School in Boynton Beach, Fla. My schoolmates and I would run straight from lunch to recess, football in hand, divvying up the boys along the way. We played in our uniforms of white collared shirts, navy slacks, and dark penny loafers. Two-hand touch and all-time quarterbacks were the law of the land. Sometimes we scraped our knees and sometimes we took bathroom breaks. We only stopped when recess was over or when Larry, a particularly overzealous classmate, punted the ball into the mangrove swamp abutting our school. I never went to football camp; I had the lot.

In the sixth grade, every boy in our class became a member of the Cougar flag-football team. This was a right of passage, and we gladly accepted the baton. Now, while my researchers still cannot locate my all-time St. Mark numbers, I promise you that I was an athletic flag-footballer. Over those three years, I caught passes, swiped flags, bit my mouth guard, and sweat under the Florida sun. After games, I drank All Sport and ate oatmeal cream pies in my mother's van. It was transcendent.

After graduation, I'm really not sure why I went out for my high school football team. I should have confined my efforts to the baseball field, my year-round home from the time I was able to stand upright; however, ambition has the amazing ability to carry a man. I started working out with the team the summer before my freshman year. I often noticed that while I was struggling to lift the bench press bar, the senior linebacker next to me was throwing up my body weight and then some. On the practice field, we sprinted, tackled, caught, and blocked.

As I noted before, ambition can carry a man, but ambition caged within a short and skinny frame usually carries that man straight to the emergency room. Despite my natural disadvantages, I enjoyed playing, but I was confined to the sidelines that first year. I like to think that this is because my coaches didn't have the foresight to realize my great potential. Noted for my ability to count, though, I was entrusted with keeping player stats and yardage information.

My second year as a Pope John Paul II Eagle was not much better than the first. This time, I was on the varsity team. The men I tried to tackle during practice went home and shaved; I went home and read for my honors English class. I probably logged about 10 total minutes of playing time that season. During a night game before a full house at our school, however, I was called in to play cornerback. When the ball was hiked, my receiver ran five yards out, stopped for a buttonhook, and caught a pass. Then, I awed everyone by tackling him. Billy Pulte, the voice of the Eagles, announced my name over the loudspeaker. My family cheered.

It was after this game that I decided to get out while I was ahead, or at least while I could still use mine. I stopped playing football in order to concentrate on recreational baseball and advanced placement courses.

My only contacts with the sport from that point to this year were the occasional games of toss and game day at Alumni. At least, that was until I received an e-mail from the Boston College athletics department announcing open tryouts for the varsity football team.

When I read the message, I blinked it fuzzy and then into focus. This was my opportunity to round out my career in academia with participation in a sport, something of a personal tradition. I quickly replied to the e-mail confirming my interest with the team.

On Friday, I started preparing. I listened to drum cadences; I stuck to an early bedtime; I ran routes in Saturday's rain. Then came Monday. Judgment day. I rose early and went to class with the outward display of normality juxtaposed with the inner understanding that it was only a matter of time before my senior year would change abruptly.

Then, something happened. I hustled back to my room and checked my e-mail. Sitting in my inbox was a message from the athletics department. The body of the note read: "If you have not completed the compliance forms and turned in your physical to our training staff by Monday morning at 8 a.m. you will not be able to tryout." I looked at my clock: 11 a.m. I had missed my engagement with destiny by three hours.

Do I possess some latent football ability that only needs to be teased out by a sage? Can I play wide receiver as well as a Division I athlete? Could I have been a Miami Dolphin? The answer to all of these is a probable no; however, I'm not really sure I made any of those considerations before this moment. My tryout really wasn't about that. It was to be my brief sentence within a long chapter in the entire anthology of BC football - something that will forever remain in the mind of the author.

I will always have my memories of parking lot football and "the tackle;" I will always be able to dream about perfect fundamentals; and I will always have this column as a testament to my near brush with collegiate athletics. Looks like I've contributed more than one sentence after all.