Georgia by Keegan

Georgia by Keegan - December 2016 Scholarship Essay

I have accomplished a lot in my high school career, however the accomplishment I am most proud of is my time spent playing and preparing for high school football. Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted nothing more than to be a football player. I tried out in the eighth grade, and while I was on the team, I wasn’t very good and I didn’t play very much. In ninth grade, I played on the junior varsity team, but I was able to play in several varsity games because our team was really good and would often win by thirty or more points. Between ninth and tenth grade, I worked out continuously and gained a lot of muscle. I was often playing in a rotation as the third defensive end. By my junior and senior year I was a starter at defensive end and the team’s long snapper. Football taught me the importance of leading by example, as well as the importance of teamwork. The wonderful thing about football is that you don't have to have the best players to succeed. You just need 11 guys that play hard and do their job. While I am not the best athlete, I always played as hard as possible and did my job on the field. This led to great things in my high school football. As a starting defensive end and long snapper, I was able to be a part of a team that won back to back region championships. Those two teams played six playoff games and went undefeated in the regular season my senior year. Our overall record over my two years as a starter was 23-3, and we were also able to give our head coach his 100th career win as a head coach.
The greatest accomplishment for me, however, was the hard work that got us to that point. Countless days spent working out or practicing after school, countless days during the summer spent going to camps where the heat makes you so loopy that you're convinced you actually truly love wearing a helmet when it's 95 degrees outside. Countless days spent waking up early to get a workout in. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. The camaraderie that came with spending each and every day with your brothers, fighting hard until the whistle sounded. Football taught me that if you lead, the others will follow, but it also taught me that teamwork makes the dream work. When everyone does their job and they do it well, great things happen. As I move on throughout life, I will always remember that my concern and focus should always be on my responsibility, because once you start worrying about what other people are doing, you let the team down. Whether it be in the workplace, on the court, or on the field, you can't accomplish anything unless you surround yourself with people that are hungry to achieve a goal and will stop at nothing to achieve it. Football provided me with a lot of success and great memories, but in the end, my greatest accomplishment is that I can apply the lessons I learned in football to all aspects of my life to become a success.