In all my years of playing football, I have learned many valuable life lessons. One being that you must sacrifice small things in order to do great things. Another lesson is to always study hard. Lastly I learned not to take anything for granted. Football is a very time consuming sport. Between workouts and the season, you find yourself struggling to find time for leisure activities. As stated above, we all had to sacrifice a lot in order to play this sport. We had to stop sleeping in late during the summers, we had to stop procrastinating with our work, and we had to limit our time we spent with our friends. These are only a few of the dozen things sacrificed everyday in order to play this great game. I now know that if I really want to do something, I will have to sacrifice all of the small things in order to finish what I started. I learned to never give up until that task is done. The first thing our coaches tell us when we get to football is “grades come first.” Without good grades, you can't play. Personally, I think all schools should make it mandatory to play at least one sport because it will overall help in two categories. One being the childhood obesity rate, which seems to be an ongoing problem in the United States. Another is that it will improve grades. The thrill of being a part of a team makes one want to strive for grades sufficient to continue that privilege. Freshman and Sophomore year I was getting average grades on my report card. However, in my Junior and Senior year of football (when I got my first taste of a varsity game,) it became obvious I had to study hard to improve my grades to A's and B's in order to continue playing what I love. In the summer of 2012 during workouts ( a month and a half away from the season) I went to the doctor and got the news that there was something strange going on with my heart which would keep me out of workouts for 2 weeks until they did all of their tests and got the results. I was very anxious and nervous there would be something very wrong which would end my high