Failure isn’t the end, in fact, I think for some people it’s the beginning. My grandfather used to tell me you didn’t fail until you gave up. That’s something that stuck with me for my whole life I loved a challenge I never ran away from something that troubled me. In a weird way, I used to always run towards a challenge to prove to myself that I could do it. One of my biggest challenges was by far trying to play football in high school my whole life I played and I was always one of the biggest kids on the field until high school came around and I hit my growth spurt I grew up and didn’t grow outward I stood at six-five and a whopping one hundred sixty pounds. I was the slim reaper we joked on the team and everybody called me that. I played varsity my freshman year cause I was so big and I loved it I was fitting into the team the coaches were starting to love me I was working hard on getting a starting spot in the summer then the season came around and boom I finally got my spot secured as the number receiver one on the team. everything was looking up for me I was so ready to go out there and ball there was only one negative. My mom was so worried about me being so skinny and being so young going up against these kids that looked like they could be In college. What’s crazy is she was right my body wasn’t ready to be hit by these big kids. The first moment I realized I was a little out of my depth was when I caught a pass and then immediately got boomsticked and almost passed out. I’ve never actually been hit that hard my whole life but now I knew things were getting serious. It just made me want to go harder so the next time I got the ball I trucked this kid and scored a touchdown. In my head that showed me, I could hang and it proved my mom wrong that I wasn’t ready, or at least that’s what I thought the next time I got the ball I made a cut and the defender went straight for my leg, and ended up taking out my knee I’ve never felt more pain in my life I was down on the ground for at least 5-10 minutes until I was stretchered off the field and sent to the hospital. I ended up breaking my knee and just as my freshman campaign started it ended in the first game which broke my heart. That wasn’t the worst part in my head I began to think about the future maybe I bounce back next season just put in the work and ill be back better than ever. My mother was having none of those ideas she told me I was done with football and should focus on basketball because I was just not big enough to play. I was devastated football was my first love and to have that ripped away from me was terrible I couldn’t believe it for the first time in my life I was forced to fail because I wasn’t allowed to continue or so I thought. I tried everything in my power to convince my mom to let me continue playing literally everything. After weeks of begging we came to a deal, I had to completely rehab my knee and I also had to put on at least 15 pounds before I went back out for the team the next year. I didn’t know how I was going to do it but this was the beginning of the biggest challenge of my whole life. I ended up rehabbing my knee after it was fully healed and then boom the weight gain began I started lifting weights and eating better three to four meals every day I used to put myself in a food coma eating so much. After it was all said and done I gained around 20 pounds and I was ready to go back out there I made it back in time for summer workouts. Coach didnt want me to go straight into hitting drills yet. 
I know he was trying to protect me but I hit him with my favorite quotes. “we aint talking about the game I would die for we talking about practice” It didnt work but I just stood around and kept working and eventually he gave in and put me back out there. Im going to relate this to a picture I saw I was so scared of hurting my knee again I developed ways to protect my self that “failure” I had in getting hurt made me so much better all around I became more aggressive to protect myself but knew when it was time to go down to avoid injury it also made me bigger by eating more and figuring out my workout habits.
I went on to avoid bigger injuries my whole highschool career and finished it off happily as a 4 year varsity player it was amazing. That just showed me that failure was only the beginning of a great challenge and thats the attitude I keep in life even till this day.
