Dear World: Here's Me Part 1, The Football Decision

To Whom It May Concern,

To those of you who know me, I am writing to re-introduce myself. I have probably lied to you or kept truth from you in order for you to like me. This is to help you see and discover the real me. To those of you who have never met me, I write to give you a fresh introduction. One that has been untainted and one that is truth, written by me. Lastly, I am writing this to me, as I have faced many challenged mentally in my life I have sometimes forgotten who I am, hopefully through the written word, I can come to learn and discover who I am, learn to love myself, and accept who I am no matter where I am, what I am doing, or who I am with. I will be writing about different experience that I feel make up who I am. How they affected me and those around me, and then what they led to. If you have experiences you would like to share, send them to me, I would love to include as many people as I can on this blog to help all of come together and have fun in this life. Because...I mean after all....life is meant to be fun...right?

I am not going to start when I was a child...I will start though probably when I was in high school...that's kind of when my life started going in all sorts of directions, as I am sure it does for everyone at that awkward four years or so. I started high school in a small town called Elma Washington. If you don't know where that's at, that's okay...most people don't. To be brief it is a small 2,000 person loggin town about 90 miles south southwest of Seattle Washington, 120 miles North Northwest of Portland Oregon, and 90 miles South Southeast of Twilight. Needless to say, from my experience, unless you are a "homeboy" as they say there is not much success to found in Elma, WA. Now, don't get me wrong I love it there, I consider it my hometown, would I raise my son there? No. The closest Movie theater is 45 miles away in Olympia, WA. The only fast food place is a Subway...well I guess they did just get a Burger King...okay I'll stop....Elma was an interesting time for me. When I was 14 I was a freshmen, excited to start high school, and excited to play football for four years and become a local football hero for the town. That all came to a crashing halt though a month into the season. It was a trying time as I was debating on if I wanted to continue to play football in high school. Why was I considering this you might ask, I mean I had played since I was 9 so giving up 5 years of experience and love of the game was not hard. The decision was because of the coaching, or should I say lack there of. Some might disagree with me, but to me the football team was not operated on a basis of coaching and helping you improve into a better person (which is what all of my other coaches helped instill in me) no it was based off of fear, belittling, and punishment. You didn't succeed because you loved the game, you succeeded because you didn't want to have to run 100 yards every time you dropped a pass in practice. The coaches had play calls like FU and FME (interesting right) and they loved to call us that thing that Donald said he could grab because he was rich (P***y), except we were 14 and 15, playing sports in high school. They loved to belittle, make us feel small, all thinking they were "helping us" Well one day I had had enough and I walked into the coaches office and handed in my gear. You know what the great high school football coach said with Alcohol on his breath? "I am sorry your parents raised a quitter." Yeah that's right a grown man, who was talking to a 14 year old kid, felt the need to criticize the kids parents. Not once did he ask why did you quit, what can I do, how can I get better, I mean for heavens sake Amazon's automated warehouse drones have better customer service. The next day something interesting happened...I got called into the AD's office. He sat me down and you know what he said "You're quitting is based off of incorrect information." He then proceeded to tell me the language of the coaches was not a problem, that I needed to learn how to handle that, I couldn't just quit everytime someone insulted or swore at me. He then said that the play calls of FU and FME where approved by the referees of the league and shouldn't bother me. I told him I didn't really care what he thought, and that if a student athlete had rules on how they were to communicate with teachers, coaches, and staff then those same teachers, coaches and staff should have rules on how to communicate with student athletes. If I was getting paid, maybe it would be a little better, but I was just a 14 year old kid in a small town trying to have fun. Well that's when it started, the players who were two days ago my friends and team mates no longer had the same allegiance. They backed up the coach and called me and told me the same things the coaches did...I was no longer a football player...I was no longer and Elma Eagle...and it took me a long time to fully agree with my decison...

Throughout this blogging series I am going to be writing letter from me to you world. These are to help educate and teach that most of the time, people are like icebergs...our emotions that we show are only 10% of what's really going on. To help you see that there is always something you can do...and most importantly, how to help those around realize that Life is meant to be fun...

Sincerely,
Amric Sobczak