“I am the Defensive Line.” My hands trembling with adrenaline coursing through them, slightly rested on the ground being able to paint the grass as coach says. “Focus. Focus on the ball.” I hear coaches voice in my head. “When it moves you fly in between the six and a half foot guards on both sides of you.” Fiu Fiu the whistle blows only a few yards away but still racks my eardrums. I stand up from the line legs shaky and painful for being in one position for too long. “Thunk Thunk.” My head is rattled from the hit my helmet took, the ear guards compressed on my temple and a slight headache appears but is gone as fast as it came. The offensive right tackle and guard each got a smack at my helmet without the ref seeing. “That's the last time you’ll think about doing that.” Being lead division right defensive end has its gratuities and impediments, one of which is getting taunted for being slightly shorter than the guards. Standing six foot three inches and two hundred and twenty pounds I’m usually something you don’t want to mess with until you got a pair of shoulder pads and a helmet strapped to your head. Timeout has four seconds to go, I get back on the line not taking a single drop of water from the green elongated Gatorade bottles. What the offensive line doesn't know is that I frequently lift weights and have been on the power lifting team for state finals winning more than four trophies for first place. Before the ball gets tossed into the small hands of the spindly looking quarterback I let the adrenaline course through me more, “I am not letting them get their satisfaction, I am getting that ball.”. The ball snaps out of the centers hands and I am late to the start, at least that's what I want them to think. I snap up ripping my arm up under the tackles right arm getting in the inside, the guard snaps over and places both hands on my chest and doesn't let go. His fingers are long reaching past the chest guard and pinching my skin bearing searing pain and anger as I knock his elbow upwards bending it the way it shouldn't be forcing him to let go. “One hand to go.” I smack the joint of his elbow, both hands free now. Turning to make the play the running back runs flat into me expecting his guards to have plowed me into the ground like a pancake  me down. The ball is in my grasps. I wrap my huge bloody hands around the ball and strip the ball from the running back, I hit him hard in the chest with all of my weight knocking him to the ground like a rag doll. Knowing I have seconds before the opposing team notices what has happened I run out of my cleats towards the opposing in-zone. “ The thirty yard line. I have 30 yards to go, I run a forty yard dash in 4.6 seconds, I have 3.3 seconds before I get to the in-zone.” The crowd is already going will racking my ears, I can hear each single step of their shoes as they rattle the metal bleachers. I reach the in-zone and my teammates have already caught up to me allowing the satisfactory chest bumps and whoops. What I did not realise during this whole time is the clock ran out… With my teammates whooping for the game winning defensive touchdown, the field goes quite. “The blood on my hands, where am I bleeding?” I take my helmet off and observe my nose, “The blood must have stopped.” Everywhere I looked on my jersey it was covered in crimson red liquid. “The blood is only partially mine.. I had a nosebleed.. But where did the rest come from?” The thoughts bouncing around in my head as I observe the white jerseys take a neel on one knee, and then slowly each and everyone of my teammates. “I have to make sure it wasn’t the one I hit..” Time seemed to slow down and with each step it got slower, it felt like a lifetime before I reached the down player. Number 36, the running back, the one I stripped the ball from and knocked him out of the way is laying on the ground. Blood was coursing from his wrist, there was no movement, his jaw strap was knocked loose from the hit. I get shoved aside in slow motion as the EMT’s rush to his need and assess the situation. The wrist is broken clean, the bone was popping out of the skin creating a disturbing and also sorrow picture inside of my head. The ambulance is on the field now, right in front of me and I didn't notice it until 36 was on the stretcher and getting lifted into the back. The assessment came from the hospital to the parents in the stand, 36, Tim Goodman, had a broken wrist and a shattered jaw. I remember crystal clear coach saying to me, “You have no emotion on your face, but in your eyes is sorrow. Good players would be celebrating such a great hit, but great players would be worried about the health of a fellow player. You have the most potential on this team, leadership, respect not only to your coaches but to your teammates too. But the most important thing you have is a heart. The value of having sympathy is the greatest and rarest aspect of this world.” As the sentence hung in the air like a cold dagger in the back of spine causing a painful sorrow through me, Tim’s parents came up to me, my mind was in defensive mode expecting to yelled at for hurting their son, all that sputtered out of my mind in a broken croak was two simple and heartfelt words “I'm sorry.”. A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. —John Maxwell, my teammates were watching my every move, they needed to be shown the way, the way of leadership to entitle their power to lead not to only read their own life but others too. The realisation hit me like a truck, I was born a leader, raised a leader and have become a leader.