Splash: My First Big Play

I was not a good football player. As much as I love the sport, no amount of heart would have changed the player that I was in high school. I started my high school career at a private school in Princeton where sports were the number one priority. Every year, the team would win it’s division championship and a few seniors would go off to some Division One program to continue their football careers. Most notably, Myron Rolle played for my high school, but I digress. Because of the competitive nature of my high school’s team, I wasn’t shit. I tried to walk on my freshman year, but chubby 5-5, 200 pound Ben Natan got rag dolled all through summer Hell, I got laid out by the KICKER in Oklahomas. So, I didn’t make the team and my dreams of superstardom had to be put on hold for a bit.

After my freshman year of high school, I went on a health kick to deal with the fact that I was *very* fat. At the time, I had no idea how to healthily achieve that, so I ate like a European model every day and then ran on the treadmill for two hours. By the middle of my sophomore year, I was damn near 40 pounds and looked like a twig. Eventually, my body fought back against me eating like a rabbit but training like a lion… My whole system basically shut down and I missed a ton of school. I had to go to the doctor to find out how I could healthily maintain a good weight. The doctor suggested eating more and then suggested weight lifting. I immediately took to that. I started training a lot smarter the second half of my sophomore year and saw healthy weight gain to go along with it. I was finally feeling more confident in myself as an athlete, potentially.

Towards the end of my sophomore year, I made a decision to transfer back to my local public school for my last two years of high school. I wanted to be closer to home, it was worlds cheaper, and the politics of the private school I was attending deeply bothered me. When I finished all the paperwork to make the switch, I came to a great realization: the public school just started a football program a few years prior and I would have a shot to not only be on the team, but also get meaningful playing time! I was ecstatic. That spring I went to the school and talked with one of the coaches about it and he seemed stoked about it. I told him that I would be ready for training camp in mid-August.

I started working my ass off, working on football specific training a few times a week to go with my normal weightlifting. The issue was, I had no idea how to eat to pair with that kind of training. I was still terrified of the idea of getting fat again, the concept of *really* eating to supplement training didn’t get through to me, so I stayed really skinny. Once summer came around, I went off to upstate New York for six weeks to take part in an acting program. Yeah… As much as I love football, my dream always was (and still is) to become an actor, so that’s where my priorities were. I was at the program, working on shows, but also running and weightlifting every day to make sure I was in football shape. I STILL wasn’t eating properly, but the realization hadn’t come.

August 10th came quickly. I showed up at training camp 5-8, 150 pounds and ready to party. Even for the tiny football team I walked onto, I was puny compared to most of the other players. After a few days of three a day practices, I realized I probably was out of place. I was getting knocked around on the daily. The team had me playing middle linebacker and the offensive linemen would go out of their way in team practice to pancake me. It was… an interesting experience. Eventually I realized I had to start picking up my own slack, so I picked my chin up and started acting like I was 30 pounds heavier. Man, I loved the show of playing football. I would show up to practice, jersey cropped like I was Eddie George, guns out like Clay Matthews and eye black, so much eye black… I would talk shit too. It didn’t matter how many times I got pummeled, if I made a play in practice, I made sure to let the other guys hear about it. So I wasn’t that good, but I pretended I was. The coaches liked that I was such a loud shit head, so I got to make calls on defense when I was on the field. I got dudes fired up. I loved it. My years of watching Brian Dawkins highlight tapes finally was paying off for me. Just imagine some twig thin kid with his arms and stomach out like he’s hot shit, screaming in the middle of the huddle when most of the guys have 40 pounds on him. It was comical.

Once the season started, I didn’t get to see the field as much as I wanted. Being so small in a league that predominantly ran the ball, I would only come on for the varsity team on obvious passing downs. I WAS the captain of the JV squad, which is kinda like being the second tallest midget, but I was living my dream. I was finally playing football after years of not being good enough to even be the worst guy on the roster. However, it was our first JV game that I finally got my time to shine…

We played a Quaker School’s varsity team. If you don’t know what that’s like, let me tell you… A quaker school having a football team is like your local Rabbi coming on down to make you Ham sandwich: It probably won’t happen and if it does, the results won’t be pretty. Alas, we stepped on the field across from a group of guys who looked like the type of dudes I would cheat… I mean “ask” for help from in biology. Needless to say, I looked like Lawrence Taylor next to these guys.

Our offense had the first series of the game, so I was jumping around on the sidelines, itching to get onto the field. The offense scored predictably, so now I was up. We kicked off to them and they kneeled it in the end zone, so I had to wait a few more moments before I hit something. I got the huddle together, juicing guys up to go. I couldn’t contain myself. I was like a kid sprinting down the steps on Christmas morning. I went got the first call from the coach.

44 Mike Twist. I was blitzing.

I lined up over a few yards over the A-Gap, knowing I had to fake a drop once the ball was snapped and then blitz the C gap. The ball was snapped and the quarterback dropped back to pass, I made my fake drop and then sprinted to the outside of the right tackle. The tackle, who probably was two inches taller than me and only 20 pounds heavier, tried to make contact with me, but I batted away his hands and ran by him. I was in the open with a free shot of the quarterback.

He. Was. Right. There.

When I was 12 I went hunting for the first time. Growing up on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, it was a pretty common practice and 12 year old me was totally geeked to finally get out in the wilderness. The first time I went out, I was with my mom’s friend who would usually hunt deer on the farm. We got cooped up behind a mound on the woods that overlooked a clearing where we had put down feed corn earlier that morning. We waited and we waited and we waited, when eventually a doe walked into the clearing. It was going to happen. I was going to fire a gun and kill a deer. To my pre teen self, this was the ultimate right of passage for my masculinity. I didn’t give two shits about being a virgin as long as I could fire a gun and kill an animal… pretty messed up values, huh? Alas, 12 year old Ben got his sights lined up on the grazing doe and pulled the trigger. Loud shot, little kickback, but I missed. I clear missed the deer. However, the deer just stood there. She turned in circles a few times, but went back to grazing after a few seconds. I was panicked. I had to reload the rifle, which was a muzzle loader so it was a pain in the ass and took some time for idiot me to prime for the next shot. I was sweating like crazy thinking that the deer would run off…

As I was running at the quarterback, that whole sequence flashed in my brain. Everything slowed down. I got tunnel vision, only seeing this Quaker school signal caller begin to notice me, a terrified look filling his eyes. I could feel my hands dripping with sweat. Fuck, I was like Eminem in “Lose Yourself.”

I made sure I wouldn’t miss this time.

I obliterated the quarterback. I had tackled guys in practice before and on special teams during games, but I have never hit anyone like I did this poor bastard. By the time I had met him, he was clutching onto the ball with both arms, so I just went for the blow up. It shocked even me how hard I hit him. After I the whistle blew, I realized I had just got my first sack. I didn’t know what to do. So I popped up from the ground, only immediately to do a somersault and then flex like the most obnoxious piece of shit you have ever seen. My coach was laughing his ass off, but the offensive linemen were not happy with me, trying to get in my grill about it. Luckily for me, or for them (in my mind), the refs separated us.

Unsurprisingly, my organized football career didn’t last past high school. While I obviously still write about it now and still love to ball out in pick up games, 5-9, 205 pound me couldn’t sniff the roster of even the worst team in all of the NCAA. That’s OK though. I am far from upset about that, because playing football served its purpose for me. It definitely allowed me to learn and love the game more, but it also served a much shallow (probably more fun) purpose. For a few moments, I felt like I was a stud athlete when I never came close to it at any moment in my life. I got my splash play and for me, that was enough.