Middle School football team thinks of a teammate before themselves
Kids are amazing when they pleasantly surprise the adults of the world. When the story of the Olivet Middle School Eagles football team of Olivet, Michigan broke in late October 2013, it was one of those heartfelt pieces of news that you don’t soon forget.
The players on this team started plotting out a couple of plays that they planned on running in their next game that even their coaches and parents didn’t know about. Usually this is the kind of behaviour that will make the next practice a rough one for players that disregard the coaches plays, but not in this game.
The student athletes conspired that when the opportunity arose in the game they would run the coaches called play and get as close to the goal line as they could without scoring. They ran this just like it was drawn up, the runner broke away from the defense in what appeared to be a walk in touchdown. However at the one yard line he stopped and took a knee. The crowd was in total bewilderment when this occurred. Did he screw up? Was he hurt? What in the world is going on?
The next play made all of the questions of the fans and coaches go away. A young man on the sideline, who was a special needs student, was urged by his teammates to enter the field of play. They snapped the ball placed it in the young man's arms and protectively surrounded him in an impenetrable wall of blocking that guided this special runner over the goal to paydirt.
This great expression of giving is one that we all can learn from. One of the scheming Eagle players gave this answer when asked what gave them the idea to run the plays,”Because we really wanted to prove that he was a part of our team and he meant a lot to us.”
These young people have learned some great things at Olivet Middle School, and maybe their best education took place on the football field that fall in 2013 when they cared for someone special and gave all of us a lasting memory.
