Project 1 Final Draft
Kristen Swope
Mat Wenzel
ENC 2135
5 July 2017
Panthers Forever
I’ve always been warned that change is inevitable. Since I was a kid, my parents would talk about the ability to be able to adapt to circumstances that life threw at me and to move forward with a positive attitude. Regardless of these lectures, I never welcomed change into my life nor did I ever think my future would change drastically from what I had planned it out to be. When I was three years old, I started kicking a soccer ball and have loved the game ever since. Soccer became a part of my identity and I had perceived that it would always be in my life.
The soccer field was always my home and my happy place. It is difficult for me to describe the feeling I got when I would step onto the field, whether it be for a game or a practice, but it was wonderful. When I was going through something stressful or emotional in my life, soccer was always there for me. It was not just the sport that made me happy though. Most of my fondest memories of the game are tied to the people that I played with. I knew ten girls always had my back, and it made me feel like I could conquer anything and everything. My teammates and I had a bond that went beyond friendship. We shared long bus rides together where we screamed songs on the karaoke machine. We helped each other through the agony of gassers and sprints after a lengthy, exhausting practice. We watched each other get stronger in the weight room, adding five more pounds or doing one more rep than the time before. We shared smiles and laughs after winning rival matches in the last seconds of the game. Those moments with them defined me, and it was those people that made me feel complete.
When I was growing up my parents introduced me to the movie Friday Night Lights. Friday Night Lights is that typical motivational sports movie that, to some extent, has a predictable ending. Regardless of its predictable nature, it was more to me than just a movie. This movie signified what was most important in my life and the environment where I felt most like myself. Watching Friday Night Lights brought me into my soccer bubble, pulling out flashbacks of previous highlights of my most intense games. One time, I watched Friday Night Lights the night before a playoff game. Throughout the movie, I flashed back to previous playoff games in which my team struggled much like the Panthers were struggling in their season. As I laid on my couch and listened to the coach’s halftime speech, I felt like I was in my own locker room putting on my cleats and getting prepared to pull out a win in the second half right there with them. Numerous quotes from the movie have stuck with me to this day and give me a sense of understanding in my life. When I used to watch this movie, I felt like the players where my teammates as well. I related to them in the sense that our lives revolved around the sports that we loved, and therefore they understood me on the same level that my teammates did. Just as my teammates where my own unique family, so were the Panther’s football players.
As I continued to grow older, I thought I only related to the players in Friday Night Lights because our families and our lives were essentially the same. It was not until last year that I realized that maybe where I felt most at home and understood was when I physically watched Friday Night Lights, not when I was on the soccer field with my teammates. A little over a year ago, I had a career ending knee injury. I was in the middle of a rival game when I went in for a tackle. As I made contact with the ball, I felt a stabbing pain radiate up my leg and I collapsed to the ground. I remember lying on the turf not being able to move while my teammates hovered around me gasping and covering their eyes. I had previously dislocated my knee two other times, but this time was by far the worst. I took an ambulance to the hospital and had to get my kneecap popped back into its place. The injury was excruciating, but not as excruciating as the fact that I had to get surgery and that I could not play the sport I loved anymore. I cried on and off for over a month because I did not know who I was without soccer and without my teammates. I felt alone and hurt, and in that moment, I hated change. I did not feel like I belonged anywhere anymore, and I thought that I had no one left who understood me. My parents tried to get me to talk about my feelings, but I would lock myself in my room. My friends tried to cheer me up with endless supplies of sour worms and ice cream, but that just made me more upset. The worst part was finishing out the season on the sidelines while I watched my teammates run up and down the field with smiles on their faces. All of this changed, however, when I finally watched Friday Night Lights a little over a month after my injury. As I curled up on my couch, I found myself viewing this movie in a whole new light. One of the star players, Boobie Miles, goes through a career ending knee injury in the first game of the season. Because of this injury, I felt like I connected to someone for the first time since I played soccer. He became someone I admired due to his ability to adapt to change, and he inspired me to find myself again just as he had. Because of Friday Night Lights, I was able to find a new passion and move forward with my head held high. This movie became a symbol for my life. Where I was taken when I watched the film became my new community and the characters became my new family.
I am a different person now than I was before my injury, and therefore the place where I feel most at home is different now as a result. I always thought I would have my community of teammates forever, but now I realize that life always changes. Even though change may be devastating at first, there is always a way to adapt and be happy again. I have a new family now, a new home. That home is who I become when I put on Friday Night Lights and realize that I can be okay without the sport I thought I would never be without.