By Zach Stubblefield ’15

I’ve done many extracurricular activities during my time at high school and they’ve all been a blast, but without a doubt football has made me grow the most as a person.

As cliché as it sounds, football really is a character builder. It is a weird microcosm of life. People are forced to work together for a common goal, and they don‘t always like the people they are working with. There may be a punk rocker and a freakytoo who are next to each other, and they must learn to coexist. Coaches, much like bosses, may be difficult at times, but you learn to persevere. You  may need to learn how to play through an injury or sickness, but be smart enough at the same time to say something if you cannot play through it. A football team is its own little violent company.

The fun I had in football led me to try other extracurriculars. The desire to work with a wide range of people led me to try Rock ‘n’ Roll. The authoritarian nature of football coaches gave me enough thick skin to put up with Mr. Huck, The Warrior’s sponsor, when he got extra red and angry during newspaper. The resilience football taught me allowed me to run through nagging injuries during track without trepidation.

Football has motivated me to try tons of new things, but I certainly cannot say that it was all a great experience. Doing homework into the wee hours of the mornings because we HAD to get an hour lift in before our three-hour practice was certainly frustrating; being  called “slow, fat and athletic” in front of my teammates was trying; losing my senior homecoming game because of a coaching gaffe was undoubtedly heartbreaking.

Despite all this, the good times definitely made up for the bad. Whenever football knocked me down my teammates and friends were always there to pick me back up. The whirlwind of experiences football has put me through had the past four years is what has had the greatest impact on my high school experience.