The sport I love and wish to play it for a long time, is a very physically sport and my journey starts now! Football was introduced to me at an early age by my dad. It started with me watching football on tv with my dad and him going outside and playing catch with me. My dad played football when he was a teenager and wanted to teach me the things he knew and what he did not do to get himself better.

I was 6 years old playing for the East Bay Warriors in Oakland. My team the Wheels had a game that next week against the San Jose 49ers I could not wait to play but I was very nervous too.

The week could not go by fast enough, finally it was saturday! Game time! My dad woke me up matching my excitement, he said “Are you ready, it is time to play, you didn’t do all this hard work for nothing right?” I responded “Yes I am ready.” After having a good breakfast I was ready to play to try to score a touchdown for the first time. The drive seem to take forever, it was 5 something in the morning and cold. 

When we made it to San Jose the home field of the 49ers, seeing all my teammates happy and ready to play, talking about scoring a touchdown even though some did not even play the position to get a touchdown (you know how you think when you are this young) made me forget about the cold weather and the long drive. After about fifteen minutes of goofing around with my teammates we heard our coach yell out “Wheels, huddle up!”. He had a quick meeting with us and told us to go warm up to get our legs warmer than a heater. We then went on the field to warm up, stretch, and get into game mode.

The horn went off, that meant it was time to play.  Each team went on their side of the field and three people from each team walked hand and hand onto the field for the coin toss. From our team it was myself, my friends Marcus and Robert. We ended up winning the coin with the call by me saying “tails never fails!”. We ran back to our teammates got in a huddle and started chanting “I’M FIRED UP! YOU FIRED UP! YEAH!” over and over while rocking back and forth.

The enemies then kicked off the ball to us, we did not get very far. Our coach then said black offense, which meant the starting team get ready, I was on that team, my heart starting beating faster because I knew it was my time to show them that I came to play and win. The first three plays were not to me. The score is still 0-0. I was feeling anxious and ready to put a score on the board for my team. Then I was going to get the ball on fourth and 10 because we had a bad drive and needed a first down. So the coach ran our best play to me which was 28 sweep.
I had butterflies in my stomach, had thoughts of fumbling, and not getting the first down “Come on Jamal you can do this don’t let your teammates down” I thought to myself. It seem like everything and everyone went silent it was just me, the ball and this touchdown I needed to make.

I was focused and ready the whistles blew by the referees and the quarterback  said “down, set, hike!” and there I went getting the ball blowing past my defenders getting more than a first down, THE FORTY! THE THIRTY! THE TWENTY! THE TEN! TOUCHDOWN! Everyone went crazy jumping like they had ants in their pants, my parents, the crowd, the coaches, and most important my teammates. I was excited, proud and tired from the run. We won the game and I ended up scoring 3 touchdowns when the game ended, but nothing beat the feeling I got after scoring my first touchdown.

After the game my dad took me to go get cookies and cream ice cream, which is my favorite. My dad made a deal with me saying “Every time you score 2 or more touchdowns we can go get ice cream” I said “ok”. At that moment I knew that this was the sport for me to play and that I was good at the sport, and will work to get even better at it. I enjoy getting ice cream with my dad.