When I was a little kid, my brother and sister and I all called my dad a “Negative Nancy.” We called him this because nearly every time we asked him something, the answer was “no.” Since I always thought he was scary, I was more of a mama's boy when I was younger. However, one summer day my dad changed my life forever.

I was about 7-years old and watching TV in the living room. I still remember how bright the room was because of our humongous window and the old grandfather clock sitting by our front door. As my dad was leaving, he saw I was watching TV. He walked over and took the remote, switched the channel to channel 13, and said, “Watch this instead.” It was a Seattle Seahawks game against the Raiders. I was hooked instantly; the big hits and aggressiveness just wowed me.

In second grade, I signed up for flag football. It turned out that there wasn’t a coach for it, so my dad volunteered. If I am being honest, I really wanted to quit that year because, in order to really play, you had to be fast, and I wasn’t as fast as any of the other kids, and my dad was extra hard on me. My belt with my flags always got given to the faster kids so they could run. I never got a chance. I got into arguments with my dad all the time, and they always ended the same way. He would just tell me I needed to be “more coachable” and how, when playing, I needed to view him as a coach, and not my dad.

The next year was the first year of peewee football, and I didn’t know if I wanted to play. Since I was bad at flag football, I thought I’d be terrible at the real thing. My dad signed me up anyway. We practiced at the youth baseball fields, in the outfield of the girls section, surrounded by huge fir trees, and the wild fires were so bad that year we could barely breathe due to the smoke in the air. After the third practice, we finally got to pad up and had our first hitting drill, and all my worries about the sport went away. I was glad I signed up. The pads changed everything. I finally got to do what I saw on TV. I could lay people out. I was good at it, too.

I fell in love with the sport, but I still had some issues with my dad. He always put me on the hardest jobs, putting me against the biggest people. If I felt hurt, he’d tell me to toughen up and get back on the field. It was the end of the season when I realized why he was so hard on me. He wanted me to be the best I could be. He taught me that, in order to be great, I had to work for it. I respected my dad so much, and I loved how we bonded so much over sports. The lessons my dad taught me have still lasted to this day. But, all good things must come to an end.

It was sixth grade, the last game of the last year of youth sports. In my young head, there wasn’t anything different about that game. I woke up really nervous; I had my usual pre-game routine of Redbull and metal music. We warmed up and played the game. Afterward, we were all taking photos and a parent asked me how I felt that my dad wouldn’t be coaching me anymore. When I played sports in middle school, I felt something was missing, my dad. He was probably my favorite part about sports and I still use his lessons to this day.

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