Short Story

National Signing Day has finally arrived and the time has come for highest ranked high school quarterback, Nelson Daniels, to commit to the college of his choice. Nelson has scholarship offers from every D1 college in the US, but his choices have been narrowed down to his “top 5.” Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, LSU and Michigan State are the schools that are included in his top 5. Being from Alabama, he is being pressured from everyone around him, including his parents to sign with Alabama University. “Roll Tide Roll” has been a phrase fused into his blood since a young age, but he believes that was more pressured into him than being a natural choice. Ever since Nelson woke up that day, his mom Kathy, has been talking nonstop about how she cannot wait to watch him lead Alabama to a National Championship which has been “his” dream since he was a young boy. His dad, Tim, has been on Facebook all day posting about how proud he is of Nelson for it to finally be the day that he signs with Alabama.

    The time has now come for Nelson to sign with the school of his choice and it is broadcasted for everyone in his hometown to see. Thousands of people have shown up to watch Nelson sign with their favorite college, Alabama University. Nelson can definitely feel the pressure building in his body, but is excited that this day has finally come. All the time he put in in the classroom and in the weight room has paid off in a big way, a free college experience. Finally, it is time for Nelson to commit. The hats of Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, LSU and Michigan State are laid on the desk in front of him. He stands up from his chair with both parents hovering around him, walks towards the desk and says “Thank you to everyone who decided to come out to watch me pick my home for the next couple of years. I could not have done this without the support of my teammates, teachers, coaches and most importantly my parents. With that being said I decided that I will continue my football career at Clemson University.” He then lifts up the hat, puts it on his head and signs the papers that now make him a Clemson football athlete. Instead of the crowd going crazy everyone seems disappointed. No one expected him to commit to Clemson and they wanted him to go to Alabama. They took this as a stab in the back. His parents most of all are distraught. They do not even seem happy anymore that their son has committed to the college of his choice. His parents driving him home that night was terrible. They have not said a word to Nelson since he put the Clemson hat on his head, which he since has not taken off. His parents are not being supportive at all and are more disappointed than anything. Literally everyone was expecting to watch Nelson gear up for Alabama, but now they have to watch him suit up with Clemson in the bright orange. When they get home, Nelson finally confronts his parents and says “So you guys are not happy? How could you be so selfish?” His mom responds by saying “We are happy just very disappointed. We believe Alabama was the dream situation.” Nelson decided to not respond and ran to his room. Tears run down his face as he knows that he is the only one that believes he made the right decision. He now feels that he let everyone down, but he doesn't regret his decision. This is only building an eternal flame and cannot wait to destroy Alabama every time he gets the chance. This night is the start of what become a pure hatred of Alabama University.

                    7 Months Later

    It is now August and time for Nelson to suit up for his first collegiate practice with Clemson University. He could not be more excited for anything else and has been waiting for this time since a little kid. This practice starts what is hoped to begin a collegiate career full of shattered records and National Championships. His first couple of reps with the starting lineup were perfect. Everything was going beautifully. He threw two pin point accurate deep balls for touchdowns to another highly recruited athlete, Winston McCluster. Winston is Nelsons roommate and just like Nelson, he was at the top at the recruiting class for his position which is wide receiver. After practice, Nelson asks Winston to run one last put route for him as he believes he was mistiming the throw. Nelson goes to throw the ball to Wiston who has just hit his break to the sidelines and as he goes through his throwing motion his right leg goes completely numb. Nelson falls to the ground holding his right leg screaming with pain. The trainers run to him and cart him off the practice field. Nelson looks towards one of the concerned trainers and says “I cannot feel my leg.” The trainer runs him to the doctor who then examines and takes an xray and MRI of his injured leg. It is then discovered that Nelson completely tore his ACL and MCL during that play after practice. After Nelson hears the news tears start flowing down his cheeks as he knows he will miss the entire season. The season has not even technically started, but he knows that he will not touch the field for over a year. There is a silence in the doctor's room which includes his head coach, the trainers and Winston. No one has a response for what has just happened. This is arguably the worst situation imaginable for an excited kid having his dreams crushed during his first practice. The doctor recommends that he gets surgery done as soon as possible if he wishes to get to the field as quick as possible. The doctor then tells Nelson that he will not be able to touch the football field for another 16 months after his surgery has been completed. Nelson takes this information in, but nothing is coming out. He has no words for what has just happened. He did not even get touched by anything, the injury was non-contact. Everything is going through his head, all the times he spent staying after school to lift weights and work on throwing. He feels as though all of that time he spent has been wasted. The school tries to call Nelson's parents to tell him about the terrible news, but his parents do not answer. His parents have not said anything to him since the night he decided to commit to Clemson. The only way his parents will find out about this is when it is all over SportsCenter tomorrow morning. Winston walks over to the bed where Nelson is layed and says “I know this is all unexpected, but I promise everything will be fine. I will work with you everyday and make sure that everything is okay. You will come back stronger than ever. Minor setbacks develope major comebacks.” Nelson looks at Winston says “thank you” and continues to say nothing for the rest of night. Everybody leaves the room and it left vacant with only Nelson in the hospital bed for the rest of the night.

    Sleeping that night was the worst for Nelson. He got the worst nights sleep he ever had. The whole night was spent grimacing in pain, crying and thinking about all the times he could have quit football but never did. Football was his first love and now losing it for over a whole year has taken a toll on him mentally. In total he got about one hour of sleep. The nurse wakes him up at exactly 12pm to get him ready for his surgery and just from one glance she knows the Nelson had had a very rough night. His eyes were bloodshot red and you could see the bags under his eyes from a mile away. She comforts him by bringing him breakfast but he does not eat any of it. He has no appetite and he is just ready to get this surgery over with. He cannot wait to start the recovery process. At 12:15 the doctor comes in and takes him into the surgery room. On the inside Nelson is very nervous, but he does not show it. As a quarterback you are supposed to be fearless when dealing with anything no matter the pressure and he takes pride by doing that. No matter the situation, on or off the field Nelson shows that he is cool, calm and collected; even though he has never been so nervous in his entire life. Once in high school he had to lead his team on a 94 yard game winning drive with 1:54 left on the clock, but the surgery is impacting him more. He feels good on the football field because it is all he has known all his life, it is like his home. You cannot be nervous doing something that you have done your whole life especially when you are as good as Nelson, but surgery is a new playing field for him. Before this injury Nelson had never been injured, never had a concussion and never broke a bone. He sprained his ankle a couple of times during the summer when playing around with his friends, but that is not nearly as impactful as a real injury.

    The doctor looks at Nelson and says “we are now going to put you to sleep. This surgery should take about 3 hours and that is when you will wake up.” Nelson says “okay, sounds good.” and then it all begins. The doctors put him to sleep and they go to work. The doctors who have been dealing with ACL and MCL tears their whole career actually had some trouble when fixing up his leg. The tear was so bad that they did not know exactly what to start with when fixing it. It was as if his whole leg was torn up. The surgery was meant to last about three hours, but it took them almost six hours. They had to give Nelson more doses of the “go to sleep gas” during the surgery so that he would not wake up mid surgery. The clock hit 6:36 pm and they were finally done. Nelson wakes up, looks up at the clock and is very confused because he thought it was only supposed to take three hours. The doctor looks at Nelson and says “The surgery took a lot longer than expected. I had never seen a ACL and MCL tear look as bad as yours. You will still make your recovery in the same time period and it will still take about 16 months but you need to promise me that you will not try to come back to the field any earlier. With a tear as bad as yours you really should not be running at all for a decent amount of time, this is very serious. If you treat this recovery process with no care then there is a good chance you will not be close to what you were. This is not a joke.” Nelson responds to the doctor and says “Yes sir I will and I appreciate everything you have done for me. You took the time to do my surgery on such short notice, so for that I am extremely thankful. I definitely owe you one.” The doctor smiles and says “You can pay me back by winning us a National Championship next year. We still believe in you. Everyone is cheering you on and we will have you 100% of the way. Just like your friend said minor setbacks create major comebacks.

    The first couple of weeks being in classes were a struggle for Nelson. Everyone was coming up to him asking him how he was and if he will be back next year, but all that attention really just annoyed him. He wanted to be treated like any other student and just come in to do work. It is already bad enough that he still has to watch the football team practice every single day. Every single day he is reminded of what happened when he went down that one fateful evening at the 42-yard line. He will never look at a yard mark the same. Every practice he watches from the 42 yard line as a symbol to the team that he is not scared of what put him in this position. What really annoys him about practice is that the head coach is now really liking the new starting quarterback. That really annoys him because Nelson knows he is a lot better, but he cannot do anything about it. The coach keeps making jokes like “I think we really found our true starting quarterback” and “maybe what happened to Nelson was meant to happen.” No one thought that those jokes and they actually thought they were really insensitive to Nelson. The coach just has a really sick sense of humor and does not relate to any of the players. No one likes him except himself. All those jokes are doing nothing but building up a flare to do better than ever next year. He knows that he must be extremely good next year to show everyone wrong.

    The coach is not the only person that is giving Nelson a tough time about his injury. People in classes are asking him if he will quit football and some are saying that he should just quit because they do not think he will be able to come back. Also, on every single sports show the reporters are only talking about how they believe that it will be very hard for Nelson to come back from his injury. Stephen A. Smith was on record for saying “Now listen everyone, Nelson is a very good young man and I wish the best for him during this process, but when have we ever seen a quarterback come back from an injury like this at full strength. Just look at Robert Griffin the third, his rookie year in Washington was extravagant but where is he at now? He is exactly where I am during football sundays, on my couch with a pizza or maybe some chips and salsa enjoying the game. I really hope history doesn't repeat itself with Nelson and he comes back better than ever, but that has never happened.” Everyone is doubting him except for cheering him on during this very tough time. He takes this all with a grain of salt and keeps everything to himself. When walking around campus he always wears a hoodie with the hood up so that no one will notice him. He does not want to be questioned about his injury anymore.

    What really hurts Nelson the most is that even his parents are doubting him. For the first time in months his parents decided to call him on facetime the week after his surgery. The whole time they were just talking about how they believe it would be beneficial for him to just quit football so that he can focus mainly on his academics. They told him that you do not get paid as a college athlete so you might as well get a job or just focus primarily on academics so that he can get a good job coming out of college. At this point they have completely ruled out him playing football next year, they just do not believe it is possible.

    The first couple of months of recovery were very hard on Nelson mentally as even he started to doubt himself if all of this was still worth it, but he stuck with what he knew he must do. It is now summer and his ACL has fully recovered. The only thing that is still worrying the coaches and training staff is that his MCL is not as strong as it should be at this point in his recovery. They fear as though he may not be able to start practicing until after the season starts. Nelson feels as though everything possible that could go wrong has gone wrong. He is a firm believer in the fact that everything happens for a reason, so he knows not to be too worried about what is happening. He knows that he must accomplish what he set out to do when arriving to Clemson because other than football he really has nothing. He is a broke college kid since he does not get paid for being an athlete and he does not take academics as seriously as he should. When he graduates he does not have any jobs or internships set up to help him in the real world. In his mind he knows that the only job he is meant to have is to be a professional quarterback in the National Football League.

    Nelson did not start practicing until September after the first game, but he instantly started shutting everyone up. He beat out the starting quarterback to become the starter and word around town is that they have something special in Clemson. They believe they might have a future heisman trophy winner. In his first game back everything was working for him. He was not nervous at all and it he made everything looks so easy. He threw his first collegiate touchdown on his first drive back. He lead his team 76 yards down the field to score the first touchdown of the season since they failed to put up points in the first game with the old starting quarterback. He did not actually lead his team all the way down the field because he threw his first touchdown from the 42-yard line.