At some point between trying on cleats for the first time and preparing for a final season as a senior, every athlete realizes just how much they used to love the sport. They remember a time when it wasn’t about performance or comparison, when the game felt like community and joy rather than pressure and division. Most players know they aren’t going to continue into college athletics.  Many have only played for a few seasons.  Some grew up with the sport as a constant part of their identity.  However, the handful who truly fell in love with the game, who sacrificed years of childhood for it, recognize a shift near the end. 

They remember how simple it used to be: the plays, the practices, the games. It was about having a good time. It was fun. Somewhere along the way, it changed. A parent yelled at a ref. A coach snapped at a kid. Someone got benched because they weren’t “playing well enough.” A team was banned for cheating. Parents called out children from the sidelines. Slowly, the idea of fun was replaced with the idea of winning. Parents began living through their kids, and kids learned that playing wasn’t enough. Winning was required.  Winning was fun.  Winners had fun. And if you weren’t winning, you weren’t enough. 

This cycle forces athletes into a harsh realization: they either begin to hate themselves or the sport. Life becomes a competition where anything less than number one feels like failure. Athletes compare themselves constantly, measuring their worth against teammates and opponents. This brings forth incredible feats of strength, but it also teaches kids to see themselves as a collection of flaws waiting to be corrected. This cycle raises a generation of spectacular athletes who feel insecure, unwanted, and eventually left behind. This cycle has made the world's most beautiful freakshows.

Going into my senior year, I’ve felt this firsthand.  I’ve felt the weight of realizing how short life is, how quickly people move on to the next best thing and how nothing ever feels like enough. Fulfillment becomes a finish line that keeps shifting. As you get older, the people who once supported you through the struggles step back, knowing you’ve learned to carry them yourself even when you wish you could let them go. Growing up brings new priorities, new freedoms, and new distractions. Filling your life with people and choices that you want feels amazing, but it also forces reality checks. You realize you might not be cut out for the next level. You realize you won’t have time to manage a sport. Or worse, you realize how much easier life feels without the commitment. So, you quit.

Recently, while coaching at Holy Family’s youth camp, I saw the same cycle already forming and these kids don’t even know it’s happening. Every single one of them is becoming part of the next generation of athletes, and they’re already slipping into the patterns we fell into. Most of them are average, some mess around and get punished with push‑ups, and some take everything as seriously as possible. There’s always the loud kid, the quiet one who doesn’t talk to anyone but is the best out of all of them, the kid who cares about every detail and the kid who doesn’t care at all. Even at nine or ten years old, you can see the early signs of pressure, comparison, and expectation creeping in.

But there are always two or three kids who stand out. Not because they’re the best, but because they’re having fun. They remind me why I started playing. They remind me of who I used to be; a kid who loved the game for what it was, not for what it demanded. As a linebacker, I worked with kids who thought they might be one someday. I ran them through the same drills, the same footwork, the same mental training I do myself. And watching them, I realized something important.

The kids who were having fun didn’t care whether they won or lost. They cared about going full speed. They cared about being with their friends. They cared about enjoying the moment. They cared about the game itself, not the outcome. And in them, I saw the version of the sport that we all started with, the version we spend years trying to get back to.

Coaching these kids, not just watching them, brings a sense of nostalgia and optimism. When they outrun someone for the first time, they look around to see if you noticed. When they make a mistake, they will try again but it doesn't bother them as much, the whole experience is wholesome. Their smallest victories felt greater than my best ones. Teaching kids about the sport I genuinely love helps me feel more connected to the game and myself.  It reminds me of the reasons I love it but also the importance of influencing the next generation of players to be better.

In those moments of authentic fun, you realize the game was never not beautiful, we just closed our eyes. Coaching at camps reminds you of when the game was absent from fear. It reminds you it’s supposed to make you feel alive and aware, not afraid and alone. And finally, it reminds you of just how much more you will see, when you have clear eyes and a full heart.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to travel to Italy and visit historical places such as Assisi and Rome; the foundation of the Roman Catholic Church and witness Her heritage firsthand. In the span of three months, I’ve seen more of the world than many people will see in a lifetime. From Peru to Italy, I’ve stood before magnificent works that generations of families dedicated their entire lives to completing; St. Peter’s Basilica being the clearest example. I’ve looked upon Saint Peter’s tomb, the man Jesus entrusted with building His Church.  I’ve seen the masterpieces of the world’s most celebrated artists, including Michelangelo. Yet, even after witnessing works of monumental value, hearing stories of immense sacrifice, and having what many would consider life-changing experiences, I still find myself wondering how the world became so poisoned.

Most people, I imagine, would describe what I saw as a moment of religious triumph. A moment where they finally reached out their hand and felt God’s already extended toward them. Others might have been moved by the artwork; masterfully crafted, golden expressions of emotion so ancient, so complex, so powerful, conveyed with breathtaking beauty. Some might have simply enjoyed the quiet joy of a town built on faith, for faith, through faith; not on convenience or luxury. No matter what someone takes away from a place like Rome or Assisi, the experience is almost always positive.

But the hidden, almost masked revelation for those of us lucky enough to visit a place like Italy is this: while we may take something from these places, inevitably, they take something from us as well. When I left Peru, I understood that happiness, struggle, and purpose are subjective. There is no single way to find peace or to suffer.  However, when I left Italy, I felt something different. I felt a kind of disappointment, almost disgust, not with Italy but with the world I was returning to.

Coming home through Detroit to Colorado made the contrast even sharper. It’s painful to walk away from the beauty and order of Rome and return to the complicated mess we find here.  It made me think about how the teachings and values of the Church have become blurred over time, especially in America. My biggest takeaway from the trip is that the lives many of us live today are not lives aligned with Catholic teaching, yet most people don’t believe they’re doing anything wrong.

Returning home, I’m reminded of how the Church is viewed in America. Some believe Catholics are judgmental and therefore not worth knowing. Others are dismissive and arrogant, choosing to ignore faith entirely. Worse, some challenge Church teachings just to prove a petty point, while others use the Church as a tool to push their own agendas, labeling anyone who disagrees as sinners or outsiders.  Over time, the Church has become everyone’s instrument. A weapon, a shield, a platform and this distorts Her purpose. The purpose of the Church is community and salvation, not personal gain, not excuses, not manipulation. It is meant to be a place where people are shaped, not a place people reshape to fit their own desires. And standing in the heart of Rome, surrounded by centuries of faith, sacrifice, and devotion, I realized how far we’ve drifted from that truth.

What struck me most was how clearly the early Church understood this. The people who built the basilicas, who carved the statues, who painted the ceilings — they weren’t doing it for applause, or influence, or to win arguments. They were doing it because they believed that the Church was something larger than themselves, something worth giving their lives to. They saw faith as a responsibility, not a hobby. They saw community as a duty, not an optional social circle. They saw salvation as a journey that required humility, discipline, and sacrifice.

But today, especially in America, the Church is often treated like a mirror rather than a compass. Instead of letting it shape us, we bend it to reflect whatever we want to believe. We treat teachings as suggestions, morality as a personal brand, and faith as something that should never inconvenience us. The Church becomes a backdrop for our opinions instead of a challenge to our weaknesses. And when that happens, the entire purpose of the Church collapses.

In Rome, nothing felt optional. The art, the architecture, the relics, they all testified to a faith that demands something of you. You can’t stand in front of St. Peter’s or walk through the Vatican Museums without remembering that millions of people before you took this seriously enough to build a civilization around it. They didn’t water it down. They didn’t negotiate with it. They didn’t twist it to fit the culture of the moment. They let it consume them. And that is what we’ve lost. We’ve traded transformation for comfort. We’ve traded reverence for convenience. We’ve traded a Church that calls us to holiness for a Church that we expect to validate whatever lifestyle we’ve already chosen. We want the benefits of faith without the burden of discipline. We want the identity of being Catholic without the responsibility of living like one.

The tragedy is when the Church becomes a tool for personal agendas, it stops being a refuge for the fearful. When it becomes a playground for politics and pride, it stops being a home for the lost. When it becomes a stage for self‑expression, it stops being a sanctuary for salvation. And when people see only the distorted version, the version twisted by culture, ego, and misunderstanding, they walk away believing that is what the Church truly is. But standing in Rome, I saw what the Church was meant to be. A place where humanity meets the divine. A place where people come not to be affirmed but to be changed. A place where community is built on shared sacrifice, not shared convenience. A place where salvation is the goal, not a side effect. And maybe that’s why leaving Italy felt so heavy. Because once you’ve seen the Church in Her fullness, Her sincerity, it becomes impossible not to notice how much we’ve allowed ourselves to drift. It becomes impossible not to feel the ache of what we’ve lost, and the desire to be more.

What an absolute privilege and advantage it is to be born into a Catholic Christian, family raised through Sunday school and youth groups, and taught the proper values of the one true God. Recently, I attended the Steubenville Conference of the Rockies. I saw and met Father Mike Schmitz, while hearing about the values of my faith and the goals we must uphold for the future. This was my second Steubenville Conference, and I see things much more clearly the second time around than I did during the first. Rather than walking away feeling like I was able to let go of some of the negative emotions and feelings I carry handcuffed around myself, I walked away realizing just how different each person’s world is.

What I began to understand is that being raised in a faith‑filled home is not just a blessing, it is a head start, a foundation, a safety net that many people never receive. When you grow up surrounded by scripture, community, and the constant reminder that your life has purpose, you don’t realize how much of the world grows up without any of this. You don’t realize how many people are raised in spiritual silence, or worse, spiritual hostility. You don’t realize how many kids never hear that they are loved by God, or that their life has meaning beyond survival. And when you finally meet people who grew up in those conditions, you begin to understand the weight of your own privilege in a way that is almost uncomfortable.

At Steubenville, surrounded by thousands of teens united in faith, I started to see the cracks, not in the Church, but in the lives of the persons attending. Some were there because they wanted to be. Some were there because their parents forced them to be. Some were searching desperately for something to hold onto. Some were just trying to escape the chaos of their home life for a weekend. And some were simply lost, hoping that maybe God would speak louder in a conference hall than He does in their everyday life. That realization alone made the whole experience feel depressing but also uplifting.

My whole life I have seen both sides of things, I have been friends with future criminals, and ace degenerates. I’ve also been friends with uptight, never-do-anything-wrong kinds of people. I’ve had friends who love studying and school so much they just can’t seem to get enough of it. And I’ve had friends who I genuinely wonder about their ability to read from time to time. I’ve had friends who are afraid of their own shadow, and friends who walk around looking for a reason to start trouble with some unsuspecting bystander. I’ve had friends who place their love and faith in their families and others who place it in a 30 dollar geek bar. The point is I’ve had a very diverse life. I’ve met a lot of interesting people and gotten a lot of perspectives on their lives.

Seeing all these different people, all these different worlds, made me realize that no two lives are shaped the same way. Some people grow up with structure, others with chaos. Some grow up with unconditional love, others with conditional survival. Some grow up with the moral compass of the Church guiding them, others grow up with no such help at all. Yet, we all end up in the same spaces.  The same schools, the same retreats, the same pews, trying to make sense of our lives with wildly different starting points. That diversity of experience is what makes humanity beautiful, but it’s also what makes it tragic. When you’ve seen both sides, the kids who had everything and the kids who had nothing, you can’t help but feel the imbalance. You can’t help but feel the injustice of it. You can’t help but wonder why some children are handed faith like a gift, while others must claw their way toward it through trauma, fear and neglect.

On one side, you have a boy raised Catholic, learning lessons from watching the VeggieTales cartoons and attending Sunday school. A boy who was taught right from wrong from the moment he was able to understand, and one who was raised with the express purpose of revolving his whole life around God. Conversely, on the other side, you have a boy raised in a home filled with violence and abuse, where he felt as if a prayer was like firing a blank, and his only thought was getting through the day, one moment at a time. Is this fair? 

This is the question that haunts anyone who has seen the contrast up close. How can two children, both made in the image of God, live in such different worlds? How can one child grow up believing God is a loving Father, while another grows up believing God is silent, distant, or nonexistent? How can one child be taught virtue from birth, while another is taught struggle before they even learn to speak? It feels unfair because it is unfair. Not in the sense that God is unjust, but in the sense that humanity is broken. We inherit the wounds of those who came before us, their mistakes, their sins, their failures to love. And children, the most innocent among us, often carry the heaviest weight of that inheritance. They grow up paying the emotional, spiritual, and psychological debts of adults who never paid their own.

This cycle, this generational passing down of sins, is one of the greatest tragedies of our society. It creates a world where some children sprint towards God while others crawl, bleeding and hoping He might notice them. It creates a world where faith feels natural to some and impossible to others. It creates a world where the starting line is not the same for everyone, even though the finish line is. The cycle of kids paying for the sins of others has consumed our society and deprived us and it is not fair. 

When I was in third grade, I was beaten up by two 8th grade boys in my school. Not just roughed around or pushed a little, but genuine hate. These guys hurt me and I had no one to help, no way to get out of it. One of them was named Jack. His features were slightly compacted with a sharper jawline than most. I don't remember the other one’s name, but he was very average looking, slightly chubby. Both had brown hair. 

A sense of non-belonging, of not being enough, of hating myself for just being born encompassed me. I still struggle to handle this. However, it led me to one of the most important decisions of my life; to play football. I can’t imagine the person I would be, where I would be, or my life without it. I would watch movies like American Sniper where the main character was taught to protect the weak, to live with honor and I was inspired. Maybe I could be like that. Maybe what I experienced could mean something. Maybe the violence I endured could be used for good.  The decision to play football stemmed from a variety of reasons.  From when I was a young boy starting out, to this day looking towards my senior year, football is how I manage the physical and mental abuse I experienced.

When I got hurt, I lost this and it led to significant issues off the field. My grades dropped, my social life was destroyed, and I experienced cycles of painful thoughts and regrets. It felt as if all at once, the damage I had worked so hard to manage came crashing down and I couldn’t handle it. The outlet I used to cope with this was gone. Sometimes when traumatic things happen, people say it feels like a movie, like it didn’t really happen. In truth, that feeling is denial. For me, losing the consistent thing that I trusted to define me made me think about how I got to where I was at in the first place. How did I become so afraid for so long? How did I manage it? How should I have managed it? All roads lead back to the decision to play football. What kind of person would I be if I hadn’t gone down this path? I can say with complete confidence that it would not have been for the better.

I believe football is America’s sport, it is God’s sport. You either love the game or you will in time. No other sport holds a brotherhood built on the idea of sacrifice, where winning can be directly affected not by how skillful one or two players are but how strong the unit is and how much you are willing to give. The beautiful thing about figuring out what it means to love is finding the people worth suffering for. Finding the team worth suffering for. Finding a reason to go one more round regardless of the pain, the burden. It is God's sport because your sacrifice as an individual is for the benefit of the other 10 on the field, the hundreds in the crowd, or for the one individual that simply stands above the rest and helped put you back together. There’s a reason people show up all around the country to watch a group of high school kids fight each other for 48 minutes; one because our nation is obsessed with idolizing athletes but more importantly it is a sport about family, and it is my sport.

I used to be grateful to win, to succeed, to gain, to be praised, to feel loved for performing well. Now I’m just happy to wake up and get out of bed in the morning, for one more round. On this road of recovery, I have noticed with my physical therapy, my lifting, my boxing, and my life in general that I’m audacious. There is a feeling of detachment that allows me to train and fight on a different level. I don’t hesitate to push through extreme conditions and the mental barrier I’ve always had to fight with is just gone. Through my own withdrawal, I learned to love football all over again. Losing the one thing in my life that I loved (at the time) offers the kind of education and perspective you simply can’t buy or earn. I impatiently wait for my opportunity next fall to do what I love. To show everyone that all this is worth something.

I love football because it has always been the one place where my trauma, mistreatment, regrets, anger and passions were rewarded and used for something good. It’s easy to look in a mirror and say I am proud of what I see. In reality, I am humbled by my past. I wish I could live through it again, and tell myself the bad things weren’t my fault. That it was going to be okay, and that one day I would be able to cope without this outlet. Instead, I lost the outlet and was forced to figure it out. Through my performance off the field, through my commitment to everyone who believes I will succeed, I can be the inspiration that I had when I was younger, I can be what I know I am supposed to be.  

Each year, Holy Family High School takes the Junior class with a select group of teachers and senior-year leaders on a 3-day retreat in the mountains called “Kairos.”  The word “Kairos” comes from Ancient Greek and means the “right or opportune moment.”  This term appears frequently in the New Testament to describe a divine time or “season of opportunity.” A more transcendent experience of God. During this retreat we engage in “reality talk;” a chance to talk with real honesty and speak with genuine passion about the things we desperately hide from each other, and deny to ourselves.  Through these discussions, I learned about the death of a teacher’s child when they were younger than I am now. I heard stories of what it means to be strong. I heard a talk about how a person gets to the point they believe suicide is the right option. I learned about someone being humbled to a point of near humiliation. I heard a story about someone who cursed their own mother. Each message highlighted a time in a person’s life, a moment where others can relate with mutual regret. 

In every social circle, from school to sports teams, to clubs and religious groups people are just looking for a way to be wanted. This selfish desire, that we all have, pushes us together into groups and communities with similar interests and flaws. We often don’t reach out of our group for fear of not being comfortable, or worse fear of not feeling wanted. However, on the Kairos retreat, the first thing to occur is placing everyone in awkward groups with people they aren’t close to. My group consisted of 8 guys including myself. I knew all of them, but only interacted with a couple of them on a regular basis at school.

As we talked about our issues, I noticed this overwhelming consistent idea that everyone is chasing what we think is going to make us happy. One guy chose money and girls, another nicotine and alcohol, another academic achievement, another the approval of others, and another just the simple wish to have a reason to keep trying. It was interesting to hear about others’ backgrounds and experiences. Each person had some sort of trauma or missing connection from their past that is shaping their future and moving them to where they are supposed to be. “Reality talk” is a reminder of how similar we are, how each of us just wants the approval of others, and how we pretend that it’s not up to us to find satisfaction in our own lives. 

For me, the most impactful person to hear from was the one who was looking for a reason to keep trying. By that I mean he’s suicidal, looking for someone to care. The way he described things painted a very clear picture for us to understand.  He said it was like constantly having an emotional anchor weighing him down and no matter what it would not leave. Suicide isn’t this issue that happens because people are selfish, it happens because they feel isolated from what they are supposed to be. It’s not a one-off thing. It’s a repeating cycle of depression, anxiety, regret, neglect and fear that consumes a person until they either seek help or lean into the negative side of their thoughts. I learned that this individual tried to kill themselves last semester. They gave into negativity and despair and let fear win. What about their family? Their future?  And the mother who dropped her baby boy off at school for the last time just a year ago before he started driving?  What about the father who was proud of his boy for just being himself? And what about that guy’s future wife who’s meant to fall so deeply in love with him that she would accept him just as he is?  Knowing that he didn’t choose this and understanding how hard he’s working to be enough for her and for himself. The idea of someone feeling so alone they choose to end their own life is massively sad and depressing. 

Another impactful talk came from a person who shared about their abusive background, both with their family and a past partner. I think on a fundamental level when a child is abused, either by a parent or sibling or other relative, it generates this idea that being who they are isn’t enough and they must prove their worth. They feel they aren’t valuable enough to be worth loving. When they become involved in a relationship, they cling to it out of fear of abandonment.  They will overlook major red flags and often are taken advantage of or cheated on. Subsequently in future relationships, this leads them to misinterpret inconsequential details as warnings and that delayed responses from their partner means they are distancing themselves. The overwhelming feeling of not being enough also subconsciously leads them to hijack their relationships. Not because they don’t trust or love their partner, but because the last time they were vulnerable, they got hurt. At their core they cannot trust their partners. They are so afraid of not being enough that they sell themselves out, trading respect and health for the smallest amount of affection. To them that’s what it means to be loved. When a person believes their worth is based on what their partner says, they will do everything to hear their praise, even if it means destroying themselves. 

Irrespective, I believe people have opportunities to heal. The one who was suicidal can find further purpose in his work, his sport, his friends. The one plagued with an inability to sustain a healthy relationship because of his past, needs to understand the right partner will support and care for him regardless of these experiences. I recognize this is categorically easier said than done. Knowing that everyone has issues and trauma and understanding that all of us just want to be loved, we can help each other work towards something better. Handling one’s past for the purpose of benefitting others’ future is the heart of Kairos.  It means taking the “right or opportune moments,” the seasons of opportunity, to go beyond one’s confines and limits from the past and rise to a higher, more profound and fulfilled place in the future.

Tearing your knee into three and losing your life for the next nine months offers motivation to simply suffer for the sake of growth, not for personal benefit but to show everyone what your made of so that maybe all the countless hours spent training, planning, adapting and learning the game so we might turn me into a winner at the artwork we call football and at the disaster we call life.

It is only in loss we see what we gained. So, when I lose my ability to fight with my feet I chose to learn to fight as if they were an option.  I chose to take up boxing with the unwavering support from my family who, along with my coaches, taught me to genuinely find what could be called amusement in adversity. Having no experience or knowledge of how to box I started the same as brand new and eager to learn. I was told to “loosen up,” “turn the hips,” “in through the nose, out through the mouth,” and most importantly “keep your damn hands up.” Looking past the countless physical benefits, boxing is bringing such as an iron body built to endure, a gas tank scaled only by elite wrestlers -we train to fight longer and harder- and the simple ability to experience pain on a level unknown to most all, with desire to keep fighting.

I don’t think anyone realizes how difficult it is to breathe let alone think when you're sparring the professional fighter with a decade of experience and no intent of going easy on you. Then you learn what real discomfort is; it’s not doing gassers on a 110 degree field, or training 3-4 times a day, not even taking on guys with 100lbs on you for the sake of getting the reps in. Instead, real discomfort is found in challenging yourself to experience violence on a level unknown previously for the sake of the 10 other dudes on that Friday night field relying on you to make the play because knowing the man across from you has only the intent of inflicting pain makes you unfamiliar with fear rather quickly.

I’m a big believer in the idea I would never ask my players to do anything I can not or am not willing to attempt next to them, therefore I choose to endure so that when I call on my team it’ll be only the strong that can answer. Boxing has forced me to brave the concept of fear, which is a simple game of football compared to a bout with goliath. I can personally guarantee I am the single most ruthless, fearless, walking consequence of my family and coaches faith being built with a single goal in mind. Triumph.

Triumph over a setback, over a challenge, over losing, where were my friends when I got hurt? Where was my pride when I got hurt? Where was my anger, my mojo when I got hurt? Thrown in the trash, next to the terror and dread I’ve carried my whole life, because I went down broken, but rather than stay down  -I literally got up and played a game on the torn knee- I got up a new man; one who now understands that from dust we came so to dust we shall return. This body is not mine, it was a gift. Therefore I have no right to failure. It is my responsibility to achieve as much as I can, succeed as much as I can, and be the kind of person who goes back under the knife willingly just for the sake of his team. 

Why would I choose to be myself when I could choose to be someone better, not for my gain but those without my opportunities, my teammates, my family and most importantly the father and my coach who both said they wouldn’t lose faith in me. I am unbent and unbroken and I deny this consequence forced on me. I am a machine of desire, an instrument of refusal, and whether I have to walk, crawl, or drag myself there you will find my program under a state banner, and me in the vanguard not afraid of whatever life tries to take from me next.