Friendships

Friendship’s
                During all of the years I have ever played any kind of ball, I have made some of my closest friends. I have stayed in touch with pretty much all my boys that I played ball with in the glory days at good old Union High. These friendships are molded out of the sweat, blood, and sacrifices that come with every sport. Back in "God’s Country" if you are a decent athlete you can start all three sports with very little sacrifice, even less athleticism, and brass balls. One thing I can say about the Basin boys though, is they are some dirty tough work horses. Most of these work horses played all three sports so we spent a lot of time together, which branded their friendships deep into my heart.
                College is a totally different story. I didn’t meet any of these guys back in Peanut Pre-School. The difference between high school friends and college friends is that in high school you go home to your family. In college you are with you friends from 6:30 morning runs until seven that night in the training room. Yeah there is that thing called class or something like that in between. But for the most part we are together, “building the brand”, “fighting the ‘3’ fights”. I love spending time with the boys, I wish we would just have a huge house with fifteen rooms, fifteen bathrooms (I don’t want to smell them), and at least five kitchens with eight fridges cause we eat like horses.  Now that would be a college experience at its best. The thing about the SUU boys is that they are dedicated as ever. For some of them football is their life. They make the sacrifices; they have work ethic, and have a lot of god given talent.
                There are very few guys on any team I have been a part of that I honestly and truly would not DIE for. If you are one of those few guys I wouldn’t die for you probably know who are. I don’t even feel bad; your own mother probably has trouble loving you if I don’t. I have been that way my whole life. My teammates are my brothers. I think that for some guys the bond stays on the field. But for me it is something more, something that makes me jump at the opportunity to help my brothers on or off the field at the drop of a hat.

Then there are my boys who have been there from the beginning until now and there aren’t words for either of them.

Full Time Job

          Football is a full time job. Actually, it is more demanding than any full time job I have ever had, and I don’t get paid. At a "normal" job you go to work, clock in and clock out. But football...comes home with you. You’re always thinking about it, dreaming about it, eating for it, and always trying to catch a few more minutes of sleep because of it. And I love every second of it.
           Off season is not bad when it comes to the mental part of football. All I have to do is wake up at 6:04, either go and run, or do some Yoga (take your damned plank pose and shove it up your downward facing dog). Then I go to class, do some homework (maybe a dozen times a semester), lift some weights, then call it a day. But waking up for football is not like waking up for work. When I am in “God’s Country” working it is not a big deal to wake up at four or five, and not think twice about it. On the other hand, waking up to go run my guts out with a giant rubber band around my waist is damn hard to do. And it is even harder to wake up to do extreme yoga. Chuck Norris cried on Sean Claud Van Lamb’s shoulder after doing yoga with Rachel. After running or yoga I go to class and stare at the teacher with probably the dumbest look on my face because I am so tired. I am usually not listening to a word they say but staring at them, taking notes in my illegible cave man writing. After class it’s back to the weight room. The weight room is always fun for me. The guys make it a good time, we work ourselves to death while having a few good laughs. Whether it is Deezy and Whitz quoting a movie, or Eddie… well just being Eddie, I always look forward to it. Unless it is incline day, I hate weights on incline day. I always get embarrassed when I get choked out by ninety five pounds. I wasn’t even strong enough to wiggle out from the bar before I passed out. Thirteen year old girls can incline more than me. But the worst part about off season for me is gaining weight. I am not meant to be a big guy. My brothers are 5"11' inches and 170 pounds. I graduated high school at 6"2' and 185 pounds of solid steel sex appeal. Now I am expected to be 245 pounds. The bad thing about me is I never really gain muscle mass. So I eat a lot and I try to gain weight. But instead of filling out and getting buff like a normal human being, I keep the same frame and my beer gut just grows. When I say beer gut I mean beer gut, I don’t have love handles, just a pregnant woman looking gut. A beach bod is totally out of the question for this guy. Eating all of the time and eating that much food is a pain in the ass! Not literally….But it is a lot of work to cook that much food. A day for me usually goes something like this. Breakfast- 3 eggs, 2 pieces of bacon, 2 hash browns, 2 pieces of toast, a glass of milk and glass of juice. I get to school get me a cran-grape juice with a banana or kiwi. Lunch- since "FebruANY" has been going on I have been getting the chicken bacon ranch foot-long, double the meat, light lettuce, tomatoes, lots of onions, mayo, ranch, southwest sauce and tons of salt an pepper. Usually it’s just left overs or a couple packages of Ramon-Noodles (not as exciting…I know). Dinner- Is three pieces of chicken with a side of three baby red spuds and a whole can of vegetables. That is pretty damn healthy! If I could choose I would have coffee and a Pop-Tart for breakfast, a P.B.J for lunch, and a little hamburger helper for dinner. Throw in a couple Keystones and that is high class white trash.
Spring ball is the worst for time management. It is like fall camp with class in the middle of it. We watch pretty much the same film every day during spring. Why? Because practice is the same every day, we run the same exact practice every damn day. We have no one to game plan for. Practice goes exactly like this: stretch, individual, challenge, one on ones/seven on seven, inside run, blitz, special teams with Ronnie, pass situation, run situation, specials teams with Ronnie, third down ladder, two minute, get a team break, then run gassers. It is like your life is on repeat. The only difference is who is going to get mad and fight that day (which is always a good time to watch or get in the middle of). We still have morning runs and workouts, a long with practice during the spring. Plus we have scrimmages on Saturday’s that proceed whether there is 8 inches of snow on the ground or not. Practice/Scrimmages always go home with me. All night I will be thinking of every little thing I could have done better or wish I would have done different. And when I was playing for Ena it felt like he was stomping on my brain and ripping my worth as a man from me every day. I was told that countless nights while I was asleep I would be screaming the “F” bomb over and over at the top my lungs. At the same time I was screaming this I was tearing all the sheets and pillows off of my bed. I would wake up with no recollection of anything just confused, sweating, and out of breathe with only one thought in my head “the hell with you Ena!”
          But that is just the strains that everyone goes through on a day to day basis. Some guys might hate every aspect of football the lifting, running, practice, film, school, and yoga. But we all do it day in and day out. We live college football. College football is not easy for anyone. Everyone has their own personal battles. It could be injury, family problems, playing time, a girl, too many girls, financial problems, kids, their wife, the list is endless. Nothing about football is easy. We eat, sleep, and breathe, football for 365 days a year, for half a dozen Saturdays. Each Saturday is only four hours of payoff for all that hard work. That is only 48 hours of game time, for over a thousand hours of preparation.

FRAN

The ‘F’ bomb! Actually she is the mother of all ‘F’ bombs. Fran! Yes I said it, she does not sound or look that hard. But it is hell on earth. Fran is a workout where you try to finish 21 thrusters, 21 pull-ups, 15 thrusters, 15 pull-ups, 9 thrusters, and 9 pull-ups as fast as you possibly can. The benchmark time to finish the devil woman is 3 minutes 16 seconds. But after the first time I wobbled my way through her I never wanted to ever try it again let alone try to get below 3:16. I remember thinking to myself “I will main line “Draino” before I ever put myself through that again”.

This is a story of my first time doing Fran. Take into account that none of us had ever done a thruster. The team barely learned how to do kip pull ups on Thursday. Fran was scheduled that Saturday, this was the first Saturday back from Christmas break. Also take in to account that before Lamb it was a lift at your leisure type program.

Guys crawling on the ground, guys outside puking, guys lying in the hall, guys that I consider to be the strongest mentally and physically that I have ever met. There is a look of such pain and discomfort on their faces that it makes me scared to put myself through that same hell. I chalk my hands that are beyond clammy, my knees shake, my guts twist, and I can hear my heart thumping. I step up to the bar close my eyes and inhale deeply, the air is filled with a thick mist of anticipation and heat. A heat that comes not only from the guys who are about to start the workout but from the guys who anticipate their lungs and muscles to be released from the pain. I exhale through my nose literally taking my last burn free breath of the day. I wrap my fingers around the bar, it feels unforgiving, and cold, but still very much alive. Coach Bennion yells “BARS UP!” I clean what at the time being seems to be a light 95 pounds. My wrists wrench back and I feel the steel bounce off of my collar bones. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, there is only a breath between the two demands but it feels like an eternity before Bennion unleashes the devil. “GO” he yells. After the first rep I am thinking this isn’t bad. Reps two, three, and four, I am thinking that “shit I am the man, I got this.” Fourteen a fire is burning in my quads. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, I am thinking “oh my god, what in the Fran is happening.” One more, twenty one! Holy shit, find an open pull up rack. I jump up and grab on to the handles to start my pull ups. All that I can think of is how am I going to find the strength to do fifteen more thrusters. Excitement gets me through the first twelve pull ups. I get to pull up seventeen and I am thinking that this is never ending. Holy shit! I realize I have never done twenty one consecutive pull ups in my life. I do the running man in the air to wiggle my way up to Tico’s "arms at a 90 degree angle, head six inches from the top", pull up position and call it good (thanks Doc I forgot about that). I drop down from the pull ups. I am light headed and confused doing the “Fran walk” back to my platform. I bend down to grab the bar but can’t force myself to clean this “light” ninety five pounds immediately. I try to breath but I can’t get any air. I clean the bar and the weight pushes me down to start my set of fifteen. I can see their lips moving but I can’t hear them. The fire in my quads is a fire that is hotter and more extreme than anything I have ever experienced. I black out for the rest of the reps. All that I remember is walking over to the pull up rack and  with every step my vision bounces when my foot hits. I have to crawl up the safety bars on the side because the thought of having to jump seems physically impossible. I start doing my last set of pull-ups that seem like a blur.  I can feel my reconstructed shoulder holding on by the last tendon every time I bottom out.  I can’t see anything as I walk back to my platform. My throat is so dry! My tongue feels like sandpaper as I try to swallow. By this time the only thing that is on my mind is finish. I just want to get this over with. I have never felt anything like this before. I somehow finish my thrusters. My knees buckle as I walk to the pull-up rack. My legs are shaking so bad that I can’t even find the safety bar to put my foot on. I have tunnel/kaleidoscope vision. Only god knows how I finish my pull ups. Herman and Tui yell “DONE” and Bennion gives them my time. Six minutes and thirty eight seconds. “BULLSHIT” I say well think I say (Fran destroys all motor skills). It had to have at least been six or seven hours.   

I pick myself up and start to walk outside, the next group is about to go. By the time I have taken five steps the real pain kicks in. It feels like someone injected battery acid into my veins and it intensifies with every beat of my heart. It feels like I can feel the acid running through my body.  The burning that is in my thighs and forearms is unbearable. My lunges feel like I inhaled tiny balls of fire. The burning in my chest is like a million bees stinging my lunges. I can taste blood. Are my lunges bleeding? I am dying! I spit but it’s a frothy foam that could hold an anvil to the ceiling. I can literally see my heart beating through my shirt.  Just looking at my hands or forearms make them scream with twice as much pain. My hand and forearms feel like god is pulling every tendon from my elbow to the tips of my fingers with all he is worth. A Charlie horse is a fraction of the tightness in your forearms. I can’t see! The ground looks like it is the ocean. How long is this going to last?  If I wind up in hell this is what I imagine I will feel like. I tell Blake “Ace you drive. I can’t see.”  When we show up to our College Way #23 apartment I can’t hold it anymore. I start to throw up. Not a graceful car sick throw up. A throw up that is like no other throw up. I have zero words to describe how terrible this throw up was for me.  My legs quiver with every stair that leads up to my room, I lay down, six or eight hours later I gain conciseness. Never again I tell myself never again.  

This guy kills fran!

SORE

Excuse me son…are you okay? You are walking like you got a stick up your… “Yes sir, I am fine!”. There is nothing worse than being sore. Not the usual sore, but that feeling of uncontrollable shaking while walking down a flight of stairs sore. My quads quivering before I sit down sore. That dreaded moment that I have to actually exert myself to stand up after sitting on my sore ass for the last hour sore. So sore I have a battle with the mirror in the morning. “You did this to me you son of a bleep!” I say in that tone of total disgust myself (You know, that tone your dad used the only time you came home drunk in high school, yeah that tone). Which is actually a hundred percent true, it is my fault. There is some crazy thing that comes over guys in the weight room. That thing that makes us compete and push our body to its max every day. That same thing that makes the weight room stink so good, the windows fog up, your shirt looks like you walked through the car wash. It even makes some guys groan, fart and spit simultaneously. This competitiveness (known as our “egos” to the general public) is what makes us work ourselves to this state of soreness. Which I do love for some reason! To be honest I didn’t know what sore was until I was introduced to college football. There isn’t a lot of lifting out there in “God’s Country”. The closest thing I ever knew to being “sore” was when I was twelve and bailed hay. But the first time I ever felt this butt cheek burning, hamstring tearing, quad killing feeling was my senior year of high school. My brother for eternity, Stillman Blake Fenn and I just got our summer work out book from Coach Bennion. Of course we lied to him and told him we squatted 450 lbs., benched 350 lbs., power cleaned 305. So our eight sets of fifteen reps were out of this world hard for some homegrown boys like us. It didn’t help that we had never really squatted before. Yes, the occasional three sets of ten with 135, but nothing too exhilarating. Two days after this work out we couldn’t move, we had never felt this foreign thing before. This, what the hell, oh sweet lord, cheese and rice, son of a…, "MOM help me put on my britches” sore… (Blake). But now four years later I would have to say we almost look forward to putting on that extra ten or twenty five lbs., maybe staying after and doing “21’s” with the buff dudes. We just have to make sure you get that unmistakable, never hurt so damned bad, gotta love it, stick up your… soreness.