So, when I was growing up, I didn’t really have much of a male role model. My father was my best friend until he turned his back on me and didn’t want anything to do with me. I was about thirteen when that all happen, and I failed all my classes in the 9th grade while I was still in Virginia. My parents split up, my father moved in with a new family that I’m sure he was fooling around with before the divorce, and my brother is 6 years older than me and gone to college when this all went down. My best friend Matt had grown up most of his life with his parents and couldn’t really help me because I had known my parents together for all of my life to that point so it was all new to me. My father had left the picture and with things going down hill for me academically and behavior wise, my mother decided to move the two of us to Colorado where she had a long time friend and had plans to open a book store with. I remember the long three day drive to Colorado, and the going away party I had with my three or four closest friends, and most of all seeing the mountains for the first time. I had spent time in West Virginia, but anyone who has been both there and here, those mountains cannot compare to the Rockies!
I was still very angry with the world, and although my mother did everything possible, I still got in my trouble, and made many mistakes. I was never really all that good at keeping in touch with family, and friendships always had a way of coming and going, then coming and going again in a cycle because my level of trust was lower than I thought could ever be possible. I was never any good in school which I give credit to a combination of bad early school experiences, a severe case of ADHD, and the general ability to procrastinate important tasks until the ability to get it done passes, and above all, laziness. I was really good at the blame game, and letting everyone who would listen know that it was always someone else’s fault for any of my mistakes and/or failures. I could make friends, but never really allowed any of them to know really who I am, so they were mostly built on fallacy. I was only ever really good at one thing, sports.
I arrived in Colorado Springs in August of 1992, and decided that I wanted to do something I had never done before outside of going to the park with 10 or 12 friends on the block, and that was to play football. When I got to Coronado High School, and got eligibility from district 11 to play as a freshmen (because I had failed my first 9th grade year, but never played before they approved me to play as a freshmen) I joined the Cougar Football Team. I got there late, but quickly got with the program, and found out that I loved to play. I started out as a 3rd string wide receiver, mostly because I couldn’t catch but still wanted to score touchdowns, until I found out something I never allowed myself to admit to before, and that was how angry I was inside. When Coach Poirier had an open spot on the offensive line and wanted to see how hard everyone could hit, I found out that crashing into things at a full sprint, releases a lot of angry aggression, and made me feel better. I started to hit everything on the field, and looking back I must have been a lot like Adam Sandler in the, “Waterboy,” but it felt really good, not to mention I turned out to be really good at it. I became a starter on both sides of the football, and a father figure relationship with Coach Poirier grew extremely strong over the next two years. I only saw him during football season, and I was kind of wild when I didn’t have that male model interaction that I so badly needed, and couldn’t get anywhere else. So I learned to be on the edge with the wrong crowd in the off months, but it always came down to business when the seasons came around. I had grown to respect and look up to both Coach Poirier and Coach Young so much, when they left the Coronado coaching staff after I had spent 2 seasons with them, there was no way I was not going to transfer to CSCS when they asked me to.
The first thing I did was visit CSCS during the Christmas season before the year I attended to get to the know a little about the school and its students. I spent a week, then made the decision to go to CSCS. Yes, that’s right, I attended Colorado Springs Christian School initially for no other reason than to play football, and help the program get off its feet in its first season. I spent the summer with the football team to be, I was elected to be captain unanimously and I was as arrogant about it as I could get away with. That was all that was important to me at that point. I feel that the attitude I took towards myself, my past failures with academics, my success with sports, my inability to put trust in anyone or anything outside of my football coaches and mother all mixed together and topped with my then uncontrollable need to hang out with the outcast crowd because it was safe, is all what made it possible for the relationship I would eventually be blessed with. I was bad at school, which put me in Mr. DeKorn’s freshman math class, where my general fear of letting anyone in led to my life of happiness years and years later. I didn’t know it yet, but when I was on my high horse, and riding my, “better than everyone else,” attitude, it would be a girl that even with all of my self imposed, “greatness,” I was too shy to even talk to for an entire year that would absolutely break through every wall I had built for years. She would also take my heart away from me with a kiss that would stick with me my entire life afterward.
Posted by Mike.
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