My Football Memory

Andrew Saltzman

My Football Memory

My memory is of my 5th grade football season. It all started one morning. I had just got up at 7:00 a.m. Today was the day; it was win with a perfect season or be forgotten about with second place. I was so excited for my championship football game. During the regular season we were undefeated. Olympus, "the team we were going to play for the championship," was a tougher team that we played earlier in the season. Plus my dad agreed that he would buy me a 2005 Nissan Z if I got ten hard tackles on defense.

I played tight end and defensive end in that football season. When I first got up in the morning, I took a hot bath to relax my muscles. The hot water was so soothing I almost completely forgot about my game. After a little while, I got out of the bath and threw on my pads. On the drive to the game I was so nervous because I wanted to win this game more than anything. The year before I had played Bingham in the semifinals and lost by an extra point. I wasn't about to let that happen again this year. Alta was going to be number one. But one small slip could cost us the game.

We had just arrived at the field. It was 8:30 am and it was a freezing cold day. There were bits and pieces of snow on the ground. It was below thirty-two degrees and I was surprised that it wasn't snowing. The game was supposed to start at 9:00 am but our coach wanted us to arrive thirty minutes before the game started so that we could do our warm ups. We would stretch, hit, and run laps for our warm ups. We were as focused as can be.

The game was about to start and I was named one of the captains for the coin toss. I called the toss and said heads but it was tails. That meant we had to kick off to Olympus. So we kicked off and it landed on the thirty-yard line. Olympus picked up the rolling ball and started to run with it and they got to the forty-yard line before they got tackled. It was time to stop them on defense. On the first play, I faked the tight end out by pretending to shoot though the outside gap but, as soon as he went my direction, I cut towards the inside gap. Just as I got through, I saw the quarterback hand the ball off to the running back. The running back tried to cut around the outside of me but, I ran full speed towards him and flattened the kid on his back. Unfortunately, they still had gained four yards, which meant they had only six more yards to go.

A few plays after that they had gained around thirty-four yards. So they were on our twenty-yard line. On the next play, we sacked the quarterback and they lost five yards and it was second and fifteen. The very next play they gained ten yards. So it was now forth and five and they went for the first down. The quarterback was in shotgun formation and he dropped back to pass. The quarterback threw it to the wide receiver and he caught it at our ten yard line then ran it in for a touchdown. After the touchdown they made their extra point. So it was seven to zero and we were in for a tough game.

Right after that they kicked off to us and we ran it all the way back for a touch down. Plus we made our extra point. So it was tied up, seven to seven. Thing were getting pretty intense for us because we weren't used to teams scoring on us that easily.

Then we kicked off to Olympus with around thirty seconds left in the half. They got to the thirty-five yard line, then they ran a couple plays and reached the forty-yard line and the time expired. The score was tied up seven to seven going into the second quarter.

After that not much happened, the game just kept going back and forth until the forth quarter. Near the end of the forth quarter they had just finished scoring and were up fourteen to seven.

When they kicked off to us, there was about one minute left in the game and we ran the ball up to the thirty-five yard line. On the very first play we ran a reverse and got to the fifty-yard line. Three plays after that we scored with the game tied up fourteen to fourteen going into our first over time.

We won the coin toss for the over time so, we got to try to score first. In a overtime game, if you score on the other team, they would have to score also. But if you do not score, you would need to stop the opposing team on defense to stay in the game. Both my team and Olympus kept scoring and stopping people on defense in over time after over time until we finally reached the eighth overtime.

In the eighth over time, my team scored and we stopped Olympus on defense. The crowed went crazy and rush inward onto the field for the Alta Hawks was victorious with a perfect winning season and the state championship. There was hundreds of people watching our game because our game went overtime into two other scheduled games.

No one was sure of the final score, we lost track in the fifth overtime. We were all over the news including ESPN and on the front cover of the sports page. Unfortunately, I was one tackle short of the Nissan Z but, I was still very happy with how the game turned out.