Football playoff preview

Wrote this in the fall. Tell me what you think...


BRADENTON --- It was days before the biggest game of the season, and
some of
Manatee's stars huddled up.

There was Austin Jensen, a year
removed from making the Class 5A all-state
team. There were linebackers Ray
Morris and Josh McCoy, two integral pieces of
the area's stingiest run
defense. There was Kyle Levins, a member of the team's
improving
secondary. There were beefy offensive linemen Spencer Hodges and Ben
Garrott,
along with fullback Nick Roehl, who spends his Fridays running through
the
craters Hodges and Garrott create. There was quarterback Ryan
Rubino, sidelined
with knee and shoulder injuries, but still part of the
team, and senior role player
John Moran. Only this huddle was miles from
Hawkins Stadium and had little to do
with blocking assignments and fade
routes.

"I want to pray for my grandfather. He's getting older,"
Rubino said, his eyes shut
and head bowed. "Watch over him."

It's Sunday
night. Time for a Young Life campaigner meeting.

They've been coming
together for four years, the aforementioned players and a
handful of
friends. On this Sunday, days before the Hurricanes traveled to North
Fort
Myers for tonight's Class 5A-Region 3 championship game, the meeting
takes
place in the living room of Young Life area director Jim Nelson's
west Bradenton
home.

Established in 1941 by a Texas parishioner, Young
Life is a Christian ministry that
reaches out to students in middle
school, high school and college, and that reached
Manatee County in 1989.
The group as a whole meets on Wednesdays, but
throughout the county,
smaller groups, referred to as campaigner groups, come
together throughout
the week.

Yes, it is an organization steeped in religion. The group
read and discussed a Bible
passage Sunday and concluded the meeting with
each member locking arms,
dipping his head and rattling off a quick
prayer.

But it's far from the only reason this particular bunch has been
meeting weekly
since Nelson put it together in 2003. He had just
graduated a group of seniors,
and was introduced to this crew when they were
freshmen, long before they
steered the varsity Hurricanes to
back-to-back district championships and last
year's regional title.

"Sometimes,
we'll come here and won't open a Bible," Roehl said. "You come here
and
get a lot from it without even having to open a Bible, just by from
what other
people say, from what other people have done."

Roehl is
speaking from experience. His most powerful recollection is when member
Logan
Fleming told the group that doctors had found an aneurysm in his brain,
and
he could no longer play football.

"He came here, and he was still
upbeat," Roehl said of Fleming, a baseball player
who still attends
meetings and football games and is living with his condition. "It
wasn't
like, 'Oh, my world's ended.' He was still thankful because they found
it, he's
alive, and he can still be a fan."

Every Sunday throughout the
school year, the group gets together. Sometimes
they'll be at someone
else's house. Or maybe they'll take in a movie. Or maybe
they'll take a
trip to one of the 20 Young Life camps scattered throughout
the
country, such as Southwind, a camp near Ocala where the group spent
the
weekend following Manatee's regional semifinal win over Dunedin.

But Sunday
they were at Nelson's, where the setting was casual. Members
eschewed
typical church attire for football T-shirts, backwards caps and
sandals
as they passed around a case of Mountain Dew and a plate of homemade
cookies.

They squeezed onto the sofas and chairs lining Nelson's living
room to form a
circle. And the meeting, as each one before and after
it, began with "Highs and
Lows," where each group member recounted the
high point and low point of the
past week.

The high points varied from a
successful stab at ultimate frisbee to Manatee's
pummeling of Dunedin
to the thought of a school week shortened by Thanksgiving.
One of the
lows sat in front of everyone's face: Hodges, the team's
Division
I-caliber lineman and one of its captains who suffered a season-ending knee
injury
Friday night. His left leg was outstretched on a hammock, and
there was a pair of
crutches by his side. And luckily for Hodges, so was
Young Life.

The group has been through plenty over the years, Nelson
recalls, and have always
managed to take solace in each other. It happened
last year, when Rubino suffered
a severe knee injury during Manatee's
Class 5A state semifinal game with Fort
Lauderdale St. Thomas
Aquinas.

He returned to his house from the hospital that night to find his
fellow
campaigners waiting for him.

It happened when Morris lost his
grandfather nearly a year ago.

"I didn't really have anyone to talk to about
it because my family was going
through the same thing I was," Morris
said. "I talked to them, but talking to these
guys, and coming here . . .
Being able to think about something else for a little bit,
it really
helped me through it. They were all there at the church with me,
which
really, really helped me through it."

And it happened recently when
Manatee alum Zane Zavadil, a friend to many of the
campaigners, died in a
car accident.

"They've stayed together. They have never left the group.
There's been some
issues and some problems, but they've hung together,"
Nelson said. "They've been
really committed to each other. . . . This
is a very, very special senior class."

That's the reason they all make
time for Young Life. That's why Debbie Crowe,
Morris' and McCoy's boss
at The Shake Pit, gives them Sundays off. That's why
Morris and Garrott
cut their hunting trips short. That's why Roehl chuckled
recently when,
while attending a USF football game, Nelson --- seated just a few
seats
down --- sent him a text message, reminding him about Sunday's
meeting.

"I was like, 'Yeah, Jim. I know,' " Roehl said.

The meetings will
not end with Manatee's football season. And they won't end when
Morris,
Roehl and the rest of the seniors head off to college next fall. They'll
be a
new class and new batch of campaigners to lead.

Nelson knows
he'll never forget this one.

"They really love each other, and they have
set a new tone and new culture for all
the kids below them who are
looking up to them," Nelson said. "They've really been
great examples."

 

I enjoyed the story, but there were a few gaps that left me wondering.

First, I'd like to know more about Nelson. Who is he? Why is he involved with kids from the football team? Is he only involved with kids from the football team? If so, why not kids from the baseball team?

You mention that this Nelson was introduced to these seniors, but you don't say how it took place. By a coach?

I'd also like to hear the kids speak a little more. It might be nice to hear one of them address the whole idea that kids who do this sort of stuff are pussies or Jesus freaks or something of that nature. Surely, they've had to deal with that sort of sentiment at some point along the way.