Football can teach you how to handle heat

Whenever August rolls around, and it becomes increasingly tough to slog through work in the 95-degree heat, I think back to the start of my freshman football season almost 20 years ago.
To this day, those two weeks of two-a-day practices and the entire season, for that matter remain the most physically and mentally demanding experience that I have ever faced.
And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
In fact, if it had not been for freshman football when I was in high school, I don’t think I ever would have known how to endure the rigors of law school or tackle a host of other daunting challenges that I’ve faced in my career.
Not that it seemed like such a beneficial experience at the time. Actually, it was the opposite.
Our coach was a guy named Huffman who had arms that were larger than my neck.
He’d played offensive line at the biggest high school football powerhouse in northern Indiana. Not only that, but he’d been captain of the only team from that school to have ever won a state championship.
The guy was intense. Think of the boot camp scenes from “Full Metal Jacket” but nowhere near as pleasant. If we respected him, it was because we lived in sheer terror of him.
You knew the meaning of dread whenever someone fumbled, jumped offside or missed a tackle in practice. Huffman would look to the heavens, slam his clipboard to the ground and then launch into as many expletives as he could string together in a five-second span (and in some of the greatest combinations I’ve ever heard).
“Oh, we’ll get there,” he’d yell as we ran sprints or did pushups to pay for the teammate’s mistake. “That’s my job, fellas. I’m gonna get you there if it kills me.”
Where “there” was who knows? But it became the focus of my life for three months.
And every week, our team seemed to be getting closer to it. The last practice before a game always ended with Huffman bringing us in for a huddle and whipping us into a frenzy.
“We’re getting there, fellas!” he’d shout as we head-butted and chest-bumped.
And then we’d lose. Some were heartbreakers. Most weren’t even close.
The worst part was the post-game speech. We’d wait in the locker room on one knee before a chalk board. And we’d wait and wait until we heard Huffman’s cleats walking down the hall. He’d plow to the front and explode.
“This ain’t no Chinese checkers!” he’d say, his face turning as red as our jerseys. “Ya ain’t gonna get there like that, fellas.”
I never got the reference, but he was right: Our practice the next day driving a blocking sled until he was satisfied we were back on track wasn’t no Chinese checkers.
I think the whole experience allowed me to recognize the value of teamwork, discipline, dedication and commitment things that have readily spilled over into professional life. And I definitely learned how to stick to it in the face of adversity. Even though we lost, we kept getting better every week.
But most of all, what I took away from freshman football was this: I would never have to live through it again. Nothing, I’m sure, will ever be as challenging.
So, when I walked through the August humidity this morning to the office and saw the mound of work I had sitting on my desk, it was like I heard a pair of cleats walking down the hallway.
No problem, I thought, and got down to the business of getting there.