My name is Eugene Walter. I am a Drake University football player, and someday very soon I am going to be a part of a historical moment in football history because the Drake University bulldogs are going to be playing the first American football game on the continent of Africa. I am going to document our team’s journey from the floor of the Killibowl stadium, where our team will compete against an all-star team from Mexico, to the tip of mount Kilimanjaro that we will summit with them.
Football has been a driving force in my life since I was a child. I can remember when my mother took me to my first football game. My eyes—captivated by the competition and excitement of the game—glued to the action as I watched Marcus Allen dive over a wall of red and gold. At the time I had no idea why the stadium erupted the way it did when he jumped over that pile. But from then on football would always be a part of who I was. I set the goal of playing on weekends for that hometown team in the distant future. I fantasized about myself throwing off tacklers by diving into couch cushions and running through the neighbors’ hedges. It was not until I first started football, around third grade, that I realized that it wasn’t going to be easy. I learned that the people that are fortunate enough to play this great game for millions of fans were not given anything, they had to work for it. And from then on I did whatever I could to be the best. My drive was that I had to be the best at everything. Sprints, I had to be first, class projects had to be A’s, teams for any activity, I had to win. All that work has lead me to here-Drake University, where I have decided to study writing and psychology and where I spend all other energy chasing the hope of playing on a weekend.
Coming into Drake University I was an undersized defensive lineman. Six feet, Two hundred pounds, as a tackle at the division 1 level, is a difficult obstacle to overcome. I worked hard but still could not get much weight to stick to my body. I got faster, stronger, but still going into my sophomore year is when I heard of the trip to Africa. I was no closer to being the player I needed to be. I remember leaving the meeting, where Coach Creighton announced the trip to Tanzania, thinking that perhaps my dream of playing on that big stage will happen after all. I had been accepting of my role as someone who worked as hard as they could to make the people around them better. I received my recognition for being a hard working and selfless guy by players and coaches alike. But I was never able to give up the hope that someday I would earn my spot on the field.
I found myself with a new goal. Those distant dreams of NFL glory had been replaced by more idealistic fantasies of being a father and husband. But this trip was real. I was going to be a part of a great moment in football history. Though this trip means a lot more to me than just historic precedence. Tanzania is the culmination of my commitment to this school, this team, this sport, and my family. This trip is in: every morning I wake up before the sun cracks the frostbitten ground of Iowan winter, every time I get hit by an offensive lineman almost twice my size, every time I sneak away from my friends to get an extra workout, each time I sit in my car, listening to the radio on hearing my team play halfway across the United States.
I suppose what means so much to me about this trip is not the chance that I might play but that it will be something regenerative about it. We are doing far more than just playing a game. We are not just introducing a sport to a country. We are teaching something we love to kids that might forget the rules eventually of American football but the impact of the men teaching, my football family who have been molded by this great game, will leave an impression on those children that will last and affect them and us for the rest of our lives. Some might feel that the manifestation of this trip will be in the orphanage wing we will help build while we are there, or in the climb up the mountain with the Mexican all-star team, or the television special, or the game broadcast, and in part they’d all be right. But I can tell you for us, as the players, our greatest excitement comes from being a part of something greater than ourselves. The initial attraction of the game in: the glory, the competition, the sportsmanship, the selflessness, the parts that make up the greater whole that make us work harder and harder each day.
Thank you for reading.
Eugene “EJ” Walter #97
Drake University
Department of Arts and Sciences
Eugene.walter@drake.edu
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