The young Halfback was lying on the field, his white number 42 easily visible on the dark field; he wasn’t sure how he should feel at the moment. He didn’t know if he had failed or succeeded, all he could hear were cheers and boos. All he knew was that it all started with one sentence. “Listen up Jumanji, our main runner is injured, we need you out there. You just need to run three yards, grab the touchdown, that’s all. Think you can do it?” It was the final game of the season, the team so far had three wins and three losses, meaning this was their chance at a winning season. The score was 38-35 against them. The boy just nodded his head at the coach, put into a shocked silence by the news. He didn’t even mind the coach’s use of the nickname he hated. He walked onto the field and thought back to the day he first got the nickname.

“No sir, it’s pronounced Ja-” The boy started, but was soon interrupted. “I don’t care, I’m calling you Jumanji, get used to it.” He was slightly irked, but he let it go. The man, who had identified himself as the coach for Junior Varsity, was much bigger, more muscular, and most likely, smarter than him. It was the first day of “real practice” for the Palm Harbor Hurricanes, his high school’s football team. He was only a freshman, and was much smaller than the rest of the team. He had been pushed by his brother to do football, but was regretting it slightly. He had dreaded the day he would go out on the field for a number of reasons. First, he was the weakest on the team, which meant that when they learned to tackle, he wouldn’t accomplish much, regardless of what side of the equation he would be on. Not to mention he couldn’t catch, one of the basics of the game. He also knew nothing about the game. The big day of position allocation came quickly. This included both offensive and defensive, so he was scared. “I can’t tackle, I can’t take a tackle, I’m done for!” The boy thought. They started with defense and the coaches for each position spread around the field. He asked the coach what he thought he should do. “Um, w-well, you totally seem like a linebacker. Totally.” The head coach said, stifling a chuckle. Not catching it, the boy went to the group in a naïve fashion, a decision he would regret as soon as practice started. Once offensive allocation started, a different coach sent him to the Halfback group, where he felt he actually belonged.

“JUMANJI!” He heard his teammates yell happily, snapping him back into reality. He smiled a little. The team and coaches always liked him for some reason. They called him “gutsy” for being a linebacker at his size. They also said he “had a lot of heart”, which he couldn’t really understand. When it came to playing, he always went down easily. As for practice, he was mediocre at best. He wouldn’t get far as a Runningback, usually making it about 2-3 yards before getting tackled. He always was one of the last ones to make it to the end during suicides as he was ironically slow. And as for tackling, he couldn’t even move anyone, let alone bring them down. Yet, he always made it to the end of practice. He could have whined and moaned, but he didn’t. That was one of the few things he prided himself on. “Take what you can get when it comes to achievements” he liked to say.

As he kept walking on the field, he thought back to his first day of weight training. “Ma, I’m not sure this is a good idea,” he said. He was sitting in his mom’s car, dressed only in basketball shorts and an undershirt, carrying a bottle of Gatorade. It was the beginning of summer, middle school had ended, and he had been going through what he called “emotional trauma” Looking back on it, he realized he may have been exaggerating; he was even starting to realize he hated middle school. He was constantly bullied and his teachers were either in their first year of teaching or crazy, mostly both. One of the worst parts was that he went through some of the most idiotic drama that would even make Stephanie Meyer throw up. Once it ended, he was sad and he was scared. He was about to start at a high school where he barely knew anyone, and he knew for a fact that it would be a repeat of middle school. These were the main reasons his parents wanted him to be on the football team. They were worried about him, so they signed him up and forced him to go. “I don’t care what you say, you’re going to do this. You need to make some friends and get stronger,” his mother retorted, before abruptly opening the car door and pushing him out.

As soon as he walked into the weight room, he almost had a heart attack. Inside, he saw kids who looked like they spent their entire lives on a bench press, with muscles he could only compare to Arnold Schwarzenegger, before the steroids at least. His mother told him about how these kids’ families were obsessed with football, and how that was their main idea for their career, but this was just ridiculous. The worst part was they were mostly his age. He was put into a group consisting of a sophomore, who had a beard that made him look 20 and a height that made him look 13, his freshman brother, who had a build closer to the boy’s, and another sophomore who was the biggest guy in there, and probably the smartest too. The boy smiled at the memory of his old workout group, then grimaced a second later, remembering how the rest of the day went. He had done the stretches and when he started benching, he threw up after lifting the bar once.

“Note to self: Don’t eat eggs before practice.” The boy thought to himself as he was on his way home in his mom’s car. He had called her, got picked up, and was given a break for a week by his parents, after which he tried again. He found more success this time, and the practices got better. Slowly but surely, he was getting stronger, made apparent by the gradual increase of weighted rings on his bar. He went from just the bar, to 10-pound rings, to 25’s, to eventually 35’s. He knew he was still the weakest on the team, but he didn’t care. He was happy he had made progress. As he looked back on his progress to this moment, he was strangely happy and confident. “If I was able to handle IB and football, I can handle this.” He thought to himself, as he kept walking, until, all of a sudden, he had arrived at his destination. In front of him was the team’s Quarterback, whose happy expression had quickly turned to a serious one.

“Alright Jumanji, this’ll be a quick play. Our Wide Receivers have been getting shut down at every opportunity, so we decided it would be our safest for you to run the last 3 yards. So I’ll just hand you the ball, and all you have to do is find an opening and run like you just saw some chemistry, or whatever you IB nerds like.” He said. The boy only nodded, slightly smiling at the joke. Once the QB shouted “Break!” he got into position. The QB shouted “HIKE!”, he was given the ball, and he started running. He went one yard, two, and for a second he believed he could really do it.

His belief, however, was soon proven to be wrong. As he ran, a shadow overtook him, belonging to a lineman twice his size. The lineman easily tackled him, hard enough to make him black out. The last thing he heard before losing consciousness was “And in a close call, the Spongers have beaten the Hurricanes 38-35!”