This past week, was a tough one for me. A good friend of mine from high school passed away from cancer. He was only 35 years old and leaves behind a wife and 2 small children. It really pains me to think what his family is going through.<\/p>\n
About 2 months ago Ben started feeling bad and after a visit to the doctor he was diagnosed with Metastasized Colon Cancer. After doing some reading on the subject, I learned what that meant. He had developed stage 4 colon cancer which spread to his kidneys, liver and throughout his body. He put up a valiant fight, but ultimately succumbed to cancer. <\/p>\n
Thinking back on my relationship with Ben, I regret that I did not keep in touch with him over the years. We played football together in high school and then trained together before going off to separate colleges: he went to the University of Houston; and I went to the University of Oklahoma. I never shared this with Ben, and maybe I didn’t realize it myself until last week, but Ben taught me a very important life lesson.<\/p>\n
It was the last scrimmage of two-a-days before our senior season in high school started, Ben played center on the first-team offense and I was the starting middle linebacker on defense, so we went head-to-head on almost every play. Ben had a significant size advantage over me, so I had to rely on my instincts to get to the play before Ben got his hands on me. It didn’t start out well for me. Ben got his hands on me almost every play and on the plays he didn’t get into position in time he would grab me and hold me from making the play. I protested of course, but Ben just grin his signature grin, where he knows he was doing something wrong, but no one was there to catch him. After a couple series of this I was so frustrated. I had to muster everything I could not tear up and quit. My coaches talked to me and calmed me down a bit. Then Ben went out for 3 plays and a new center came into the scrimmage. I made three straight tackles. It felt so fulfilling!! It was at that point that I realized that you can never quit, no matter how hard things get. If you keep working hard and doing the right thing you will prevail. That season I went on to set every tackle record at Anderson and I think Central Texas. I recorded 170 tackles in 11 games. Who knows what would have happened if I let that scrimmage get to me or shake my confidence.<\/p>\n
That same lesson carried me on to OU. It was my dream to play at OU, so I took the opportunity to walk-on despite the chance to play on scholarship somewhere else. It was a tough road! Every year a walk-on has to prove himself until he earns a scholarship. It is especially difficult when you change head coaches 3 times and position coaches 4 times in 5 years, but I made it. I was on the team for 5 years and played enough to earn a letter my redshirt freshman year.<\/p>\n
This lesson will carry on with me for the rest of my life, and now every time I am challenged I will think of the lesson Ben taught me many years ago. Never give up!<\/p>\n
Rest in Peace Ben! You will be missed buddy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This past week, was a tough one for me. A good friend of mine from high school passed away from cancer. He was only 35 years old and leaves behind a wife and 2 small children. It really pains me to think what his family is going through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/daverowe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/daverowe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/daverowe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daverowe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daverowe.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/daverowe.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/daverowe.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daverowe.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daverowe.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}