September 8th is the day that I will forever remember. Under the shining lights on the Ramapo turf, the Raiders were having their way with us like we didn’t even belong on the field with them. At halftime, it was 21-7 and I told myself that we were not starting the season off 0-1. On the field during a halftime that felt like an hour, the energy on our sideline was dead. Everyone moping around thinking that they were going to put up another 21 points just to run the clock so we could get out of there, but not me. We all huddled up as a team and I delivered a speech that was one for the ages. We came out of that huddle with a fire inside of us and we came back to make the greatest comeback that this rivalry has ever seen. We were able to rally together because we planted the seeds of motivation long before the kickoff of that game… …show more content…
After the rigorous off-season training, all of the coaches met and picked 5 captains to lead the team, who were the ones to lead by example and to set the precedent for the generations to come. They are the ones that we are going to have to pass the torch to at the end of the season no matter the outcome of ours. And for me, being a natural born leader, it didn’t matter if we just gave up a huge play on defense, I was always the guy to say “Next play, don’t worry about it” or “Shake it off”. Ramapo vs. Wayne Hills has been the biggest rivalry in public school football in the state for the past 30 years, but this year things had changed and they weren’t in our playoff bracket this year so we only had one shot at these guys. We knew this game was going to be our biggest challenge up until the Title game in December. These were just some of the points that I made to the team on that day that I will never