[MTK]

I played two years of modified ball as we called it, (7th and 8th grade) and two years of JV. I played both ways, starting at center and defensive end. I went to a small high school and most of us played both ways. Back then I went about 6-2, 210 which was pretty big for a kid my age.

One of my favorite memories was in practice actually. It was in 8th grade and we were still trying to sort out who was gonna play what positions, and I really wanted to play DE and I finally got my shot to line up at end. The first play I got to the QB and tipped his pass, the next play it was a pitch to the HB to my side and I met him just as he caught the pitch and just flattened him. At that point the coaches were taking notice, so the coach called a sweep to my side and I shook off the TE and made a diving ankle tackle to bring down the back. Keep in mind this happened on 3 consecutive plays, well, my coach went nuts, he came running up to me, grabbed me by my facemask and screamed "I think we just found our starting DE!". I was on a natural high for the next week for so, LOL.

I didn't play varsity ball unfortunately. Instead I thought working and having a car were more important, looking back now that's one of my biggest regrets, not playing those last two years. If I could go back and do it all over again I would have played all 4 years and busted my tail. I'm not saying I could have gone to some big college and played, but I think I could have had a shot at a smaller sized state school or something. Ahh what could have been.

I had some nice glory days in college playing flag football too. One year we won it all and just steamrolled everyone. Our average score was something like 35-6. I was the smallest guy on our line at 6-3, 250, we had a brickwall for a line it was great. The next year our QB who was incredible graduated so we had to find a new guy. We got back to the championship game but lost, if we had our QB from the year before we definitely would have won two in a row.

Oh yeah my # was 82. Orginally my coach had me pegged for TE, but once I got a shot at DE I stayed there. Funny how I got to play center, one week we had an away game and we had to leave school early to go. The kid who played center couldn't go, his mom wouldn't let him leave early, LOL, so the coaches asked who wants to fill in at center and I was like sure I'll give it a shot.