12-03-2011
A lot has happened in three months. Apart from my teaching job, my life and all of the free time in it has been consumed by football. If I'd had a little more discipline and forethought, I'd have made time to post regular updates of our team's progress this season, chronicling the ups and down of playing American football in Korea. It's too late for that now. The best I can do is to type whatever feelings I have in me right now on Saturday night, 13 hours before I take the field with my teammates to play for the KNFL Championship of Korea.
Part of me can't believe we made it. The other part still can't even believe I'm playing this sport in this country. Tomorrow will be the biggest game of my whole life. I've played in and won championships in tournaments or city leagues over the years; lots of them. But we weren't on tv. We weren't in newspapers. The only fans who'd come on a regular basis were mom and dad (love y'all). Tomorrow we'll have a few hundred crazy fans coming to watch us and cheer for us to bring home that trophy. I've never played in a game this big, but I don't feel any pressure because I believe in the other 40 guys who I've stood shoulder to shoulder with all year.
My pregame preparations have already been set. I bought my 2L bottle of water and bag of bananas for the guys (first come, first serve). I've got my gameday breakfast lined up for the morning - oatmeal and raisins (thanks to Jenny for the last minute delivery). I just took my dose of Nyquil (8 hours before my wakeup time) to ensure I get a good night's sleep, and I have my Saturday evening movie queued up and ready to go as soon I'm done with this. Every night before a game I've watched a different football movie (Any Given Sunday, The Replacements, The Program, Rudy, The Blind Side, and The Express), but tonight I'm going to watch The Warriors. I've never seen it, and a certain friend is constantly quoting to me a certain famous line from that movie whenever we talk, so tonight is the night. Seems fitting.
The game will take place on our home field, unlike the last 2 games we played where we had to travel down south to Daegu, a trip that begins for me at 530am and ends after midnight. It'll be nice to sleep in and wake up at 8am for this game. The opponents are the Domino's Breakers. Yes, Domino's pizza is their sponsor. One of our sponsors happens to be Subway, so it's going to be a battle not only for the KNFL Championship, but also for fast food supremacy in Korea. Actually, we just really don't like these guys. They gave us our only loss of the season, 27-28, and now we get another shot at them. Come to think of it, it's a lot like that inevitable LSU-Alabama rematch that's going to take place in January. Looks like we're Alabama, and we're looking to get even.
So that's it. Because of our loss to the Breakers in the regular season, we had to play last year's defending champions in the semi finals to make it here. We put them away and now we have one more game to win. They don't like us; we don't like them. It's going to be a hard fight for 60 minutes. I just pray that every player will be able to walk off the field the same way they came on, just with a few more bruises than they had before, and for us, a certain piece of hardware for our coach to put on his mantle. Go Warriors.
