If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
…

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

-Rudyard Kipling, “If” (a poem given to us by Coach Pedersen before the Lawrence game)

Saturday was a brawl. My body is still in shambles after the 55-34 loss, a unique level of soreness achieved only after the toughest of games. The last two weeks have been rough on my body, but Saturday’s matchup against Illinois College proved especially brutal for me. Even with fall break last week, my energy hasn’t quite returned since I got sick before Lake Forest. I was (and still am) confident I could get the job done at a high level, but when I headed out for warmups on a sunny fall day in Jacksonville, IL, I had no idea how crazy the game would be.

We ended up setting school records on offense for most plays run (105) and most passes attempted (67). One of our drives covered 99 yards in 22 plays. I played both ways in high school, and until Saturday I never needed help off the field after a game. I was (and still am) completely exhausted, and despite the loss I am proud of the way we continued to battle throughout the game. I’ve been on teams before that have given up when an opponent has gotten up on us - IC was beating us 41-13 at one point in the third quarter - but we’ve always kept fighting. We might not have the most guys, but this is without a doubt one of the proudest, hardest-working teams I’ve ever played on. What’s truly disappointing is that our record - the benchmark by which all outsiders will judge us - hasn’t shown that so far.

David Fleming’s ESPN.com piece on linemen sums up my current state nicely: “If you played in a knock down, slug ‘em out Steelers-type game, you are gonna hurt bad the next morning,” says [Texans tackle Eric] Winston. “Knees, hands, fingers, back, shoulders, neck, you are gonna hurt like hell for two days — and that’s when you’re young. The older guys? They don’t feel right again until Thursday.” So, I guess it’s a good thing I’m young, right? During the season, I never really feel like it. I’ve been taking Glucosamine Chondritin to ease the pounding on my joints, but the week of rest I always take after the season’s over is looking pretty appealing now.

However, I need to fight the temptation to look forward to the season being over. This late in the year, it’s always tempting. The last few weeks of the season are always cold and painful. But I’ve resolved to continue living in the moment so that I can make the most of my precious remaining time on the football field this season. I love football so much that I was willing to transfer schools in order to keep playing, and if I just try to finish the season it won’t have been worth all the pain and hard work it took to get here.

When I look back on this season, I want to know that I didn’t call it quits early because my body told me to. I owe it to everyone around me - my parents who supported me throughout these tough times, my former teammates at CC, and the players and coaches who welcomed me into the Grinnell Football family - to carry on and keep playing each snap like it’s my last. Only then can I be proud of what I’ve done.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at chris@thed3experience.com All original material copyright © 2008-2009 Chris Jarmon

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Posted: 10|26|09 at 5:32 pm. Filed under: My Life as a D3 Player.
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