Pain Followed By Pleasure (Football), 2006, by Donavon Greiner
From MemoryArchive
Who: Donavon Greiner What: Pain Fallowed By Pleasure When: November, 2006 Where: Washingon, Iowa
As I awaited in the north in-zone, I could feel my heart pounding heavily against my chest. I felt like I could have thrown up. I could feel the firm grip of my two teammates through my orange and black Cutters brand football gloves.
One of the seniors yelled out “ lets go!” The whole team took off running. As we ran down the sidelines our crowd was cheering pretty loud for us. I’m sure they weren’t overly excited, since we were down twenty-three to seven. When we got down to our benches I stretched back out. I could feel my muscles stretching back out from when we warmed up before the game.
I don’t think anyone thought we could come back and win. When the kick-off team was huddled up on the field by the sidelines coach Ganoe said “we are going to go for the onside kick.” Everyone was fired up as we ran to our positions on the amazingly soft field. Before the game even started everyone was shocked by how soft the field felt, even with our hard cleats on, but at this point the grass was the last thing on my mind. I heard the ref blow his whistle. Amazingly we got the onside kick. Everyone gave one-hundred percent from then on out.
I was the full-back, so I was lead blocking just about every run play, and I was doing a lot of pass blocking. I don’t think I have ever been so beat up in a game before. After every hit would feel throbbing pain, but it would only last for a few seconds. We finally caught back up with Williamsburg in the fourth quarter, and we even took the lead by one, with the extra point after the touchdown. Everyone was getting worn out. I could taste the dirt and sweat in my mouth-guard, but not for one second was I ever thinking about giving up.
Time was finally running out, and we had the ball. Toward the end we just needed a first down, so the time would run out. I remember getting hit so hard that my head was throbbing. Everyone else was celebrating, but I decided to bend over and take it easy for a few seconds. About one second later, I could hear the crowd screaming, chanting, and yelling as loud as they possibly could. So I stood back up and joined the rest of my teammates. Everyone one the football team was going nuts. No one could actually believe that we came back and won. I look up at the score-board, as it read Washington 24, Williamsburg 23, with zero seconds left on the game clock. All I could smell was the horrible body odor of everyone around me as we were all jumping around, but nothing could have stopped us from celebrating the night we beat Williamsburg to go on to the next round of the play-offs.[[Category:Football]
