Little did I know when I finally brought myself to take the entrance exam to get into Mount Carmel high school in Chicago, Illinois, that I was about to join into an elite group for the next four years of my life.  So many things ran through my thirteen-year-old mind while trying to make a decision that would affect the next four years of my life so dramatically.  Do I want to follow my dream?  Will I fit in?  Will I make friends?  Is the sacrifice really worth it?  Why do I have to make this decision?  Has anyone invented a machine that lets us see into the future yet?  In the end of this night long, gut-wrenching decision, one can only hope for the right decision.  However, the influences of this decision were always there, beckoning my every thought for months.

          Since I was very young, I can remember being surrounded by Mount Carmel high school alum.  My father and all his brothers, his father and his brothers, friends, cousins, etc. all made the trip to 64th and Dante to go to high school there.  It was a family tradition that, in the back of my mind, I wanted to continue.  I wanted to be able to go to alumni events with my father and share that common bond.

          Then there was football.  Growing up, football was my life.  I started playing competitively in fourth grade, and when I was not playing competitively I was at the park playing a pick up game with all my friends.  I always imagined making a name for myself on the football field.  Growing up, I knew this was something I was meant to do, something I was good at.  Mount Carmel was the perfect fit.  There was no better football team in the country, let alone Illinois.  I remember going with my father, at age seven, to see the Illinois state football game between Mount Carmel and Naperville South.  I can remember the excitement, the crowd, the happiness, and the promise I made to myself after watching the Caravan prevail that afternoon.  One day, I would be the one on the field with a seven year old watching me, reciting to himself a dream that eight years later he would begin to fulfill.

  I hitched a ride to Mt. Carmel, and decided to to let fate take me for a ride.      

     The morning of the Chicago Catholic high schoolís entrance exams was cold and rainy.  Every one of my grammar school classmates was doing the same thing I was doing.  However, since all the high schools had their entrance exam on the same day, everyone else knew where they were going.  My decision was between Mount Carmel and Catholic league rival De La Salle.  Every two minutes that morning I changed my mind.  Even though I always wanted to go to Mount Carmel, I was afraid I would not be able to play on such a superb football team.  I would not have to worry about this with De La Salle, since the coach offered me a scholarship and guaranteed I would be an essential part of the team.

          I finally made my decision, I was going to be a coward and pass up my dream.  I was aware of my cowardice while my mother was driving me to the corner where the bus to De La Salle was to pick incoming freshman up and drive us to the test.  Three friends and I sat on the bus stop in the rain while the bus arrived to take us to school.  Suddenly I could not move.  The doors opened, my friends got on, and I just stood there.  As the bus turned the corner, I thought the driver was going to stop.  However, the bus continued as I stood on the corner crying, not knowing what to do when it struck me.  This was Godís way of telling me not to be a coward.  I hitched a ride to Mount Carmel, and decided to let fate take me for a ride.
 
          I was happy that fate occurred the way it did.  I was not supposed to get on that God for saken bus to De La Salle.  My destiny was to make a name for myself at Mount Carmel high school and follow my longtime dream of making more dreams for seven-year-old football lovers.  I was finally at peace inside, happy with my decision (or happy with Godís decision), and anxious to start school and football in the fall.

          Before long, I figured out that I had not only become just a mere member of a high school or a football team.  Something told me it was much larger and more special than that.  As a freshman I saw the way the juniors and seniors on the varsity squad presented themselves.  All of them were so serious on the football field, but off the field messed around with each other as if they were kids.  They were true friends.  They treated the coaches as if they were their parents.  ìYes, coach.  No coach,î is what I heard on the field.  Not ìyeah Mr. Sadjakî as I was so used to saying throughout grammar school.  I always thought that this terminology towards coaches was inappropriate on the football field.  It seemed too much like a boot camp.  However, I soon became the one replying, ìYes coach.  No coach.î  This was the result of a respect that I took in my coaches.  You do not say ìyeahî to someone with whom you respect.  I learned this in a few weeks and it is something I have not forgotten since.
 
          As time went on, I began to make friends on the squad.  One day I began talking to a teammate that seemed to be sort of an outcast.  His pads did not fit him, he could barely run, he could not play to save his life, but he came to practice every day with more enthusiasm than anyone on the team.  His name was Clint Connolly.  Little did I know at that time that Clint would eventually become one of my best friends at Mount Carmel.  In a sense, Clint also shaped my experience at Mount Carmel high school as well as the rest of life.  Things that I learned, I never would have learned had it not be for him.  As the commercials say, going to school with Clint Connolly was priceless.

          My high school years were spent playing football.  If I was not in season, I was doing everything I could to get ready for the next season.  I strove, along with 90 percent of my teammates, to be the best on that team.  In addition to lifting weights and running on my own, I joined the track team so I could get faster for the future months and be more prepared for my next opportunity to get on the field.  For those players who were not involved in winter or spring sports like wrestling, track, or baseball, off-season conditioning workouts were required.
 
          Freshman and sophomore years went as planned.  I started every game at outside linebacker and began to think I was a true Mount Carmel football player.    While I was starting for two years I sometimes looked at players like Clint and asked myself why they did it.  They barely played, they never got the glory like most of the starters received, but still they kept on playing, and kept on playing as hard as they could.  I always told myself I would never be able to do that, never be able to sit on the bench and cheer for people I would be jealous of.  Then came junior year playing on the varsity level, and things began to change.  I realized what it was like to be like Clint.  It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

          Personal success on the field had gone to my head.  I did not feel the need to prepare myself for the upcoming season because I thought I would again be a star.  As a result, I played a total of seven plays that year, but learned in those seven plays why I was a part of this team, why I joined this extraordinary group of people that brought my life to a new level.

          At this time, Clint and I were finally on the same page.  We sat on the sidelines during games and cheered for the players, our friends, on the field.  We practiced our hearts out despite knowing that Saturday would come and we would not be on that field in front of the crowd showing off our talents.  That season, despite the hardship I encountered not being a star on the team for the first time since fifth grade, I began to see the big picture.  It was not the glory of being on the field, or hearing your name over the PA for making a tackle, but it was the thought that I belonged to something special, something that I could be proud of.  I realized that I belonged to a family.

          The next season came and I did not make the same mistake I had made the summer before.  I worked and worked and worked at becoming the best football player I could be.  I did not do this for myself, like I had my first two years at Mount Carmel, but I did it for the team.  As a result of my new outlook, I returned to my starting outside linebacker position.  I achieved my childhood dream.  I was able to play in front of massive crowds of people.  I played in and helped my team win that glorious end: the Illinois State Football Championship.

          As I reflect on this experience, I fully understand what I went through for four years.  In four years, I gained a whole new family in which everyone was equal.  I realized what it meant to be a brother.  To have someone look to your for support was great.  My brothers and I picked each other up when we were down, when we hurt, when we thought it not possible to push ourselves any farther.  And as a result, we were able to fulfill each otherís goal that we began talking about our freshman year when we were no more than a grammar school all-star team hoping for fifteen minutes of high school fame.  We won that championship, and we won it for each other, our brothers, not for ourselves.

          I did, however, fulfill one of my own selfish dreams by winning that championship game.  As I was leaving the Illinois State football stadium after we were presented our deserved trophy I saw a group of kids, presumably seven-years-old, wearing Mount Carmel apparel slapping the hands of all the players, saying they were going to win state when they got older.  I suddenly flashed back to when I was seven-years-old viewing my first Mount Carmel football game with my father and telling him how I would be the one winning state when I got older.  I realized that I was now what I always wanted to be when I was seven.  Now my teammates as well as I were the guys that I was in awe of ten short years earlier.  I finally accomplished my dream, my goal.  I realized all of this as I was walking out of the stadium with my arm around my brother Clint.