The Saturday after I started the eighth grade was huge. My first Pop Warner game since the scholarship started at 8 a.m. Carter’s first college game with the Gators was that afternoon at one. I might have had three hours’ sleep on Friday night, thinking about it all. Earlier that day, I’d gotten a call from the sports media department at Gainesville.
“Coach Goddard asked us to set you up a Twitter account,” the voice said. “He doesn’t allow his current players to tweet, but you’re a special situation. Starting tomorrow, he wants you to tell people what’s going on in your life. You know, all of the good things—the hard work, the excitement. You just text your thoughts to us. We’ll read through them, make sure they’re appropriate, and then we’ll post for you.”
“Do you think I’ll have any followers?” I asked.
“Don’t worry. Coach is completely behind this,” answered the voice. “We’ll publicize it on our website, on campus, and push it in media outlets throughout Florida and nationally. Your story is of great interest to many people, Travis. We’re going to make sure that number only gets bigger.”
“What’ll I call myself?”
“We already have a username for you. It’s TravisG_Gator.”
Right from the start, I liked the sound of it.
* * *
Saturday morning at the field was crazy. Mom sat in the first row of the bleachers, surrounded by six or seven reporters. A crowd of more than five hundred showed up. It was the most people I’d ever played in front of. And every one of them seemed to know my name.
“Go get ’em, Travis! This is the start of something special!”
“Travis, show us that Gator spirit!”
Cameras pointed at me from every angle. There’s no press section at Pop Warner games. So those reporters were practically spilling over our sideline.
“Yo, Trav, you’re making us all into rock stars,” said my center, Damon, who’d snap me the football. “Maybe I’ll get the next scholarship someplace.”
“I’d like that. It’d mean nobody could get past you to sack me,” I told him.
Damon stood only five-nine but weighed nearly a hundred and ninety pounds. He was huge—without much muscle tone. Over the summer, he’d picked up the nickname Ground Round because he won a hamburger-eating contest, chomping his way through fifteen burgers in just twelve minutes.
His sister Lyn came to see us play that Saturday too. Our pizza date had been great. I had even worked up the nerve to kiss her by the end of it. My first real kiss. When it was over, I felt like spiking a football and doing a celebration dance.
Lyn could have been our prettiest cheerleader. I’d asked her on our date why she didn’t go out for the squad.
“I’d rather be playing than cheering,” she answered. “Some guys don’t like that. They’re probably afraid of getting beat by a girl.”
I knew Lyn was right, because I certainly didn’t want to be in the batter’s box against one of her windmill fastballs.
Butterflies did cartwheels inside my stomach as I jogged onto the field. I stepped up to the line of scrimmage and barked out signals.
“Thirty! Blue, eighteen! Blue, eighteen! Hut, hut!”
Damon snapped the ball into my hands, and I found the leather laces. All of that nervousness disappeared. I was where I belonged. Where I was most comfortable. And I just played football.
On my first pass of the game, I had a receiver a full step behind the defense. I never hesitated. The football glided out of my left hand and spiraled down the field. I threw an absolute laser beam, and the ball stuck inside my receiver’s palms.
That easy groove stayed with me. I sensed every bit of defensive pressure coming my way. I wasn’t thinking—I was reacting. I noticed a defender being a real ball hawk, looking to jump every route our receivers ran. He wanted to get there a step early and intercept one of my passes. So I took a snap and purposely kept my eyes glued to the receiver he was covering, making that defender believe the ball was coming his way. Then I gave the perfect pump-fake. That ball hawk bit. He jumped the route, nearly springing out of his cleats. Only, my receiver kept right on running vertically.
The defender slapped his hands against his helmet, knowing he’d been suckered. Then I floated the ball to my wide-open receiver, giving the ball hawk even more time to think about what had just happened.
For the rest of that game, I had one eye on the clock, wishing it could slow down. I wanted to stay on that field forever. The game felt more like one big party being thrown in my honor.
When it was over, I grabbed my phone to text the media department my first official tweet. As I typed out the message, Lyn patted me on the shoulder pads, congratulating me. The cheerleaders had gathered around me too, along with a bunch of reporters waiting to ask questions.
@TravisG_Gator Won 35–14. Receivers played great. O-line protected me 2 the max. No dirt on my uni. Mom won’t even have 2 wash it. Go Gators!
Two hours later, I had put on a Gators T-shirt and was standing inside their locker room beside Carter. Coach G. had invited me to run onto the field with the team for their first game of the season, then watch from the sidelines. Except for Alex, I was much smaller than everyone there to begin with. But in their pads and helmets, the players seemed even bigger.
“So, you ready?” I asked Carter, who was sitting on a three-legged stool in front of his locker. “Because I am.”
“I’m glad you’re ready. All you’ve got to do is run through the tunnel and not fall on your face,” he said. “I’ve got fifty plays running through my head and a checklist of key words to remember for audibles at the line of scrimmage.”
“Tell me the keys. I’ll quiz you,” I said.
“Can’t. I’m not supposed to tell anyone who’s not part of our offense,” he said, smearing eye-black across the bridge of his nose and beneath his eyes until he looked like a raccoon. “We’re keeping the circle closed. So our signals don’t get out by accident.”
“You think I know players on Florida International?” I said, annoyed. “How am I going to give any secrets away?”
“Sorry, bro, I don’t need to get called out by any of the coaches over doing something stupid.”
A few seconds after that, Alex came over and asked Carter, “You know what to do when our QB shouts, ‘Hero’?”
“Yeah, I know,” answered Carter.
“Let me hear,” Alex said.
Carter mouthed, Go pattern, like I couldn’t read lips. I felt like some second cousin visiting from out of town instead of his brother.
Then Coach Goddard stepped into the center of the locker room, and everything went silent for his pre-game speech.
“If you’ve been listening to the sportscasters, you know we’re thirty-one-and-a-half-point favorites today. That extra half-point always makes me laugh. Maybe it’s because those Florida International boys have to come to our home, to our swamps. What are they, the Panthers? A swamp’s no place for kitty cats. It’s Gator territory,” he said with a half-smile. “But when you run out onto the field, I can guarantee you that scoreboard’s going to read zero-zero. That gives those boys all the chance in the world to beat you. Nobody gives you anything on the football field. You have to take it. You have to step up and perform. Now, go out there and play like Gators! Be champions!”
An electric current shot through the locker room, like Coach G. had hit some secret switch. I could feel the spark starting in the soles of my feet, running all the way up my spine. I went charging toward the door along with everyone else, with Carter already far ahead of me.