Romelo Perry

Literacy Narrative Rough Draft #1

UWRT 1101

Robert Arnold

I turned and looked to the stands where my mom was sitting and saw her cover her eyes

and when I turned forward, all I saw was 3 kids from the opposing team running towards me as

fast as they could and I did not move. “When you catch the ball or recover the ball while on

defense you’re supposed to run towards the end zone, son.” My rookie team coach told me as I

went over to the sideline, not knowing what at all I had just done and why everyone was so

happy. “Now get back out there and help our offense score a touchdown.” And I took to the field

and helped my team drive the ball to the end zone and not know whether we won or lost, because

the rookie league didn’t keep score.

When I went home that afternoon inside I felt kind of embarrassed that almost every

player on my team, knew that I was supposed to run when I caught that ball and I did not. My

family and I walked into the house and I turned the living room TV to a college football game

that was about to start and I sat there for the rest of the day watching every game that I could,

trying to learn the actual rules and regulations of a game I was starting to play. I thought that

maybe watching college football, would help me understand the game better, and it did, but I

wanted to learn everything about the game. The following day I was in the living room all day

long waiting for the NFL games to begin and I watched them all day, as well. I quickly started to

like the New England Patriots and my mom to this day still tries to convince me that the Dallas

Cowboys is the best team in the NFL and we will never agree on that.

As I got older and more experienced with football I figured out there was more to the

game then just hitting the person in front of you, which a lot of people that watch the game think

that, that is all football is and it’s really not. By the time I was in 6th grade, I had learned every

job for each different position on the offensive and defensive line. I had the most knowledge and

experience on my recreational team in 6th and 7th grade and since our team ran the same plays as

the middle school and high school, just less advanced, it was really easy to adapt to the style

when I got the chance to play in the future. My high school offensive line coach worked with me

on the plays that they ran while I played on the recreation team my 7th grade year. He mostly

worked with me because he knew I had a lot of potential to be one of the best lineman we were

going to have while I was there. I will never forget something he said to me while we were

having an afternoon session one day, he said, “Romelo, no matter what happens, if you get hurt,

if we suck, if you don’t like anyone on the team, you have to set the example for all the guys in

and out of school. You can’t be like everyone else, and you can’t let other people bring you

down. We are going to need you to be the voice and leader of our team while you are here and

you will have a huge impact every season you are here.”

I played for our middle school team my 8th grade year and was already put into a

leadership role, with being named the lineman captain. We didn’t get playbooks and were just

taught our plays in practice that we had and a lot of the guys didn’t know the rules and what

different fronts meant or how to block them, so with the knowledge I gathered from my sessions

with the high school offensive line coach, I offered help to the guys on my team after practice. I

just drew up different fronts for our offensive line to see with the basic x’s and o’s and

considering which play we were running how each one of us would block it up. Some of the

guys were amazed that I knew so much and at their position and I just preached to them that once

you learn even and odd that it will become way easier to understand and all of them would be

able to play each separate positon on the line. At the time, they didn’t know what even and odd

meant because it was how the offensive line in high school split the defense and knew who to

double team and who not to double team, also depending on how well the player was.

Recreational and Middle school football was a much slower paced game then it was when I got

into playing high school football. I played one year on the Junior Varsity team at my high school

and I think they kept me on JV that year so I can adjust to how different high school football was

then anything I had ever played before and it was.

I wasn’t the best player, I wasn’t even the best lineman when I was there, I wasn’t the

biggest, strongest, or fastest, but how much I knew and how hard I worked made me stand out

more than a lot of the other guys on my team that were more talented and athletic than I was. We

were issued playbooks and every play in the playbook we went over in practice and if you didn’t

exactly understand the rules and your job on the play, the playbook explained it to you by your

position. After a week of having the playbook I learned every positions job on each play in the

playbook and when we would run a play in practice and someone wouldn’t know what to do, I

could tell them before anyone else and it was a lot of what my coach meant when he said I had to

be a leader and take control.