It was a dry and hot late August in Wisconsin, and it was football season. I was totally prepared for football. Since November of last year, I was training for this month of this year. I was lifting weights, running, and gaining stamina. Doing all the training just to be better for this season, and better than last season where we went 0-7-1 took a lot of work. The year before was the worst record that our team has ever had. I just wanted to be better than that season. I wouldn’t care if we went 8-0, 7-1, 6-2, 5-3, or any other record besides last year. Our whole team wanted to be better than last year. One day the whole football team was running Indian runs, which was running in a line but the front person keeps on going to the back of the line as a new leader goes to the front and you repeat that method. Then something didn’t feel right. In my leg, it felt like there was a bullet wound that kept growing and getting more painful as the run went on. As we were running back I had felt like I was running with my right leg and an amputated left leg. After we got done running practice had ended. I got in my mom’s car and told her what happened, “I think that there is something wrong with my leg,” I said.

“What is it?” My mom questioned

“We were running in the prairie and my leg just started to hurt badly. It felt like a 100 lbs hammer fell from space right on my leg,” I explained

“We’ll get you to a doctors office as soon as possible to see what’s wrong,” She said

My mom and I went to one of the doctor's offices, the smell of day old coffee filled my lungs as I walk through the entrance of the building. We walked into one of the doctor's offices and took a seat. They told me that I should get x-rayed to see what's wrong. I hopped on to the machine. The machine floated around me. ZZZZZZZ, ZZZZZZZZ! The machine roared. They took me back into the office and sat me down as they left the room. I waited patiently and stared at the green ridged drywall. The doctor came in about 5 minutes later and told me what was going on. They told me that I have something called Osgood-Schlater. At the time I thought that they were speaking gibberish because I had never heard of that word/disease. The doctor told me that Osgood-Schlatter is a disease that can be treatable with physical therapy and stretching.

I was scheduled for physical therapy next Monday. I have never done physical therapy before mostly because I never get injured. We do a couple of exercises and walk a little bit to see where I’m at with my injury, and see if it flares up. which it didn’t because we didn’t do anything too hard or thing with as much movement.

Later on during physical therapy, I discovered that my injury was getting better and wasn’t flaring up. I was ready to start running. We went into the gym and did simple laps, or back and forward runs. Then out of the blue, we started doing gassers, which is long and hard sprints using a lot of jerking motion. After I got done with the gassers I had just felt like I ran a marathon that was all uphill. I was out of breath as if I were in space and I was hot as the sun. Also, to make it worse my leg started to flare up. We had a lot of work to do.

We kept going at running and jumping and stretching, and I knew I was getting better. My leg felt like my right leg. After a while, I had felt like I didn’t need physical therapy anymore. I was ready to go back to football.

When I came back the team had already played two teams and won. We had already had a better record than last year. After a couple of weeks, I was playing a lot with a starting spot on the offensive line. I had felt like this year was going to be a great year, and it was a great year. Our football team had gone undefeated and had won first place in our division. In the championship game I started and played three spots on the line, and I couldn’t be happier to be back in football.