It was a cold, dark, lively night. I was sitting on the third section of the bleachers and I sat with a clipboard and a pencil. I had a paper attached to the clipboard that was to scale the player on the football field from 1-10. The football player was Blake Matthews out of California and was a star wide receiver for the California High School. He was a great player and all but the only problem was that he was failing some of his classes.
I took exception to this statement when I first heard it but whenever I pulled up his school records I had seen that he had been failing since the start of Middle School. This took me by surprise because he always seemed so humble, on and off the field. I wondered if he was having troubles at home or at school with people bullying him or whatnot. I then thought about the college I was scouting for. LSU. We needed a big, tall, athletic wide receiver to fill spots from all the injured players we had had from the previous season.
I had to take into consideration whether it would be a good choice to bring the High School senior out of California down to Louisiana and play college ball. I had too also think about if he had failed one of his classes in Louisiana and would not be able to play due to the, “ No Pass, No Play” rule. This was by far one of the toughest decisions I had to make. I looked down at the clipboard with all my annotations about Blake and then looked at the scoreboard. It was 35-42 and Blake’s California High School team looked like they were going to get beat. But out of nowhere, as I turned to leave, I heard the crowd go crazy and I turned back knowing that they had to go for two for the win. I looked as I saw them going for it. The center snapped the ball. The quarterback saw that Blake was open, but overthrew it by at least three feet. But out of nowhere, Blake leaped up and snagged it out of the air for the extra point! I couldn’t believe it and I looked down at the clipboard with my pencil in my hand writing, “clutch”.