Personal Narrative: The Tennessee Future Stars

It was the spring of 7th grade, and a young and naive Jackson Lampley was training to become a Tennessee Future Star. The Tennessee Future Stars is an all star football team for 7th graders, and there is also one for 8th graders. After trying out for the seventh grade team in the 6th grade, and not making it. 13 year old Jackson Lampley was determined to make the 7th grade team. I was so determined like Rocky Balboa in Rocky VI (the best movie of the series), you could 've probably made a pretty epic training montage for me. I started running up and down the massive hill that I have for a backyard, and I also bought a rope agility ladder to improve my footwork. I would do about 100 push ups and sit ups a night, and yes at the time I thought

For the Tennessee Future Stars being an alternate is just a nice way of telling a young football player that they almost made the team, but was not good enough to make it. On the day of the try-out, I jumped out of bed at about 8:30 am and warmed up at my house, and was prepared to go try out for the team at Battle Ground

I had that butterfly feeling in my stomach as I was sitting in the front passenger’s seat of my dad’s 2007 pearl Ford F-150, I felt as if I was going into battle…… But I was ready. When I arrived to the stadium it was a very gloomy early April day, rap music was blasting, and the stadium felt like fresh cut grass. I got there I got my try-out number 705, I was excited because my favorite football number is 75, and I thought that that was very lucky. I then got my height and weight measured 6ft 1in 221 lbs, which Is huge for a thirteen year old, but compared to all of the others I was underweight. I then began to wait for the coaches to call us up for warm-ups, my dad came up to me and told me this “ You have been training for this since February, you have put the work in and now you are ready”. As I was waiting I looked around and saw many very athletic looking athletes, many were bragging to each other about how they would definitely make the team. Lots of guys looked bigger, stronger, and faster. I could tell that I was the only one who was still thirteen. About fifteen minutes until warm-ups I met up with my friend Jadin Smith who was also trying out at the time, and we both stretched and tried to prepare