Shadowing Holden

The first year I tried out for Punahou School I got an acceptance letter in the mail saying that I was accepted to Punahou School for the 2007-2008 school year. As I saw this letter I felt like my body went into shock because I was so surprised that I was going to be attending one of the best private high school on the island of Hawaii. Better yet it is even one of the best schools in the whole United States. I started to plan out the sports that I wanted to play at Punahou and excel in. As I read in the newspaper over the years I read that the football, baseball, wrestling, basketball, and others were the top sports at Punahou. Also I read that those sports have won championships. I had to think about it for a while because I knew that most of these sports overlapped and I knew that I couldn't play all of them at the same time. I chose to go with football, wrestling, and baseball.

During the summer I had to take a mandatory summer program for people entering Punahou as a freshman. I guess to participate in this program you had to have some kind of Polynesian ethnicity. As for me I am Hawaiian so I got placed in this program. Well the program was called Malama Bridge. When I first heard of this program I thought that I was going to be with all these stuck up haoles. People that would not even talk to you and give you a look that I refer to as the "stink eye". However, when the first day of Malama Bridge finally arrived I came to figure out that I was the whitest kid in the program. That made me laugh on the inside. I can still remember the first day and I will never forget it. I was trying to find the paper with my name on it but Guile was sitting in the seat where my paper was located. That is how I came to meet Guile and we later became good friends.

As summer was going by quickly and Malama Bridge was getting harder by the hour, I came to figure out that football conditioning and try-outs were coming up. I started to lift in the weight room and run to get in shape for the football season. The first day of summer conditioning was here and I was ready for it. The practice was brutal at the beginning because I was not in physical shape for football. After I ran I was breathing hard and it made it harder for me to run. After conditioning for football and Malama Bridge for summer. The week of try-outs arrived. I was ready to try my hardest to make the JV football team and play the football season at Punahou. However, my coach told us DBs that at the end of practice he was going to let some of us go to play Intermediate football. I was thinking to myself that by the end of the day that I may get cut from the team because I was new. So at the end of practice we had our group meeting and he called my friend from my old school and I over and told us that he felt better if we played Intermediate because we needed to work on our footwork.

I played Intermediate football however I was not a starter on the team. Every practice I worked super hard to try and make the starting 11 squad on defense. I never did start one game. However I played every single game at least 10 plays per game. But the bad part was that one-week of practice I was out sick because in the past few years' back I got really sick with pneumonia and I had to stop playing baseball for the whole year. So now when I get sick I have to watch myself so that I don't repeat myself and get pneumonia again. However, after that week of not practicing and sitting out on the side, I went back to practice. On the first day of practice back I felt like I was invisible and dominating in tackling drills and everything. I got super lucky and my coach started me in the scrimmaging part in practice. I was really hyped up and happy and I told myself to play my best.

As I was playing there was this one play that I was thinking that the quarterback was going to throw the ball to the receiver on my side and that I was going to have a chance to intercept the ball. And that was exactly what happened. I will emphasize what happened. So the ball was snapped and the quarterback dropped back in the pocket. He searched for an open receiver and looked right down my side of the field. As the sweat dropped down from his face, the ball was thrown into the air. As I saw the ball in the air I sprinted to where I thought the ball was going to reach. However as I tried to jump up for the interception I collided with the safety. All I remember was a pop in my knee and me slamming into the hard ground and letting out a roar in pain.

The coaches and players circled me as I was telling where the pain was. My coach told me that I had a torn ACL in my knee. I was taken away in a cart by the trainers. As I reached the training room I could even walk and I had to use crutches to get inside. The trainer then announces to me that I had torn cartledge in my knee and that I sprained my ACL. The trainer told me that I was done for the year in football. He also told me that I may not be able to play any other sports that year and then I went into shock.