Heart Means Everything

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is a story that expresses all kinds of emotions.  It was originally created for the viewer to be laughing throughout the movie, but it shows more than just that.  It shows the viewer that if a person or group of people put their heart into something, they can achieve greatness, and even though this movie is a fictional story line, it teaches a lot.

 

In this movie, Vince Vaughn (plays as Peter La Fleur) plays a very good role as a lower-middle class guy that owns a low end gym called “Average Joe’s Gym”.  His very caring and melo attitude makes the viewer almost feel bad for him when he finds out he needs $50,000 to keep his gym alive and in business.  It wasn’t until him and a few of his gym buddies get together to enter a dodgeball tournament in Las Vegas realize that he can can keep his gym since the winner of tournament takes home $50,000.  A team filled with a very various group of people, from a pirate to a high school male cheerleader, go to Las Vegas to represent Peter and his “Average Joe Gym”.  You can tell when their journey to Las Vegas begins that this tournament is very important to them.  The only person in his way of winning the tournament and taking home the $50,000 is White Goodman (played by Ben Stiller) who is the owner of the gym called “Globo Gym” right across the street from Peter’s gym.  The only reason Goodman enters the dodgeball tournament is to stop Peter from taking home the money and having his gym keep running because White wants to buy his gym from him.  That tells you right there that the “Average Joe’s” have more heart going into the tournament.

Putting your heart into something whether it is a sport or even job, success will be achieved.  No matter how long the process might take or what obstacles have to be overcame, the goal would eventually be achieved.  That is what is shown in this movie.  Even though some of it might not be realistic or even physically accurate, in a funny way, it shows the viewer that heart means a lot.  Peter and his team overcome the “Globo Gym’s” team in the finals to win the $50,000 and go home to fully operate his gym without being in debt and taking over White’s gym right across the street.

 

One who does not put heart into something he/she loves, nothing would be achieved; no goals and no success will be reached.  Heart means everything in life.

SWAG

“The Fab Five” is a documentary film aired on March 13, 2011 on ESPN’s 30 for 30 about the five freshman starters on Michigan’s 1992 and 1993 basketball team.  The story line is of all five freshman, Juwan Howard, Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson, and their road to becoming known as one of the greatest group of boys to ever work together.  Not only is the story line great but how it is about how these group of boys started a revolution.  They changed the way college basketball is looked at today.  There was never a group of boys like them before, and there never will be.

Throughout all the years of college basketball, every athlete of every team had to wear the required attire for each game, which was not very comfortable.  A pair of thigh hugging shorts that nearly showed a quarter of the players legs, and a tight shirt to throw on top was what every player wore for every game.  Michigan’s five new freshman did not believe they had to wear this uniform.  They looked at the kind of shorts Michael Jordan wore in the NBA and asked their coach Steve Fisher if they could wear the same type of shorts that were hanging down to the knee.  The coach replied that if the team decided to win games, he would do something about it.  After winning games and showing the coach they deserve to get what they asked for, they got these baggy shorts.  The baggy shorts gave college basketball an entirely different look around the whole county.  The new look was cooler, more comfortable and was more in style.

For the first time ever seen in all of basketball was when the fab five wore their black socks and shoes to a regular season game their sophomore year.  No one has ever seen this and if they did, they would laugh at the person wearing them, but this started another trend.  Kids across the country would watch the fab five play and they would start copying them by also wearing black socks and shoes to games.  They made this concept of all black become fashionable not just to college basketball, but all levels of the game.  Now you see almost every kid wearing black socks and shoes to games because it is “in style.”

One of the most influential things the fab five did as a group was un-categorize the stereotype of a African- American male.  People throughout the country thought that if someone were wearing baggy clothes, listened to hip-hop music, had tattoos and wore earrings were categorized as a thug.  All five of these young men had almost every single one of those traits, and they were not thugs.  They were successful, young, black males who had fun just like everyone else in college.  They weren’t criminals and thugs that hung out on corners of streets selling drugs, they were teenagers just like everyone else in college and they made this very clear to the public and media.  They showed they can have fun doing things a regular teenager would do and this helped out the youth to be more open about who they really are and what they like.  They didn’t care if people stereotyped them, they put smiles on their faces, had an awesome time and they stood up tall.

This group of remarkable young men did not just change the way college basketball is looked at today, they started a revolution.  A revolution for all levels of basketball, whether it is youth, high school, or pros, that started this era of... swag!

The Life of a High School Football Player

 

To me, "Friday Night Lights" is the one of the greatest sports films ever created.  It was created in 2004 about the 1988 Permian Panthers high school football team out of Odessa, Texas and the teams road to the state championship.  The movie was based on the novel Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream written in 1990 which was also based on the real life story of the 1988 team.  Not only do I like it because I can relate to it in many ways, but because it has the qualities of the life of a Texas high school football player.  There are different lifestyles, many positives and many negatives.  The ups and downs each character goes through is realistic and it catches the viewers attention very easily. Anyone who has had a past playing high school football can relate to this and can almost positively get the goose bumps the entire time watching this movie.

In the beginning of the movie, it seems like everything is going perfect for star running back Boobie Miles. He is looked at to be one of the greatest running backs in the country with offers being sent to him by all the big time division 1 colleges around the country.  It seems like his entire life is about football and always will be.  In the first game of the season, Boobie seems to be dominating the game rushing for five touchdowns and putting the Panthers in a serious lead.  In a quick second of playing time though, Boobie gets hit right in the knee and that's all it takes: a torn ACL.  His chances of ever making it to a big time division 1 football college to then the pros is past him.  It is a conflict he has to go through throughout the entire season watching his team make it all the way to the state championship game and losing.  He knows he could have made a drastic difference in the season and having to live through that must have been one hell of situation.  

Mike Winchell is the teams starting quarterback.  His love for the game of football is tremendous, but the love for his mother is even bigger.  Growing up, Winchell was the man of the house with just him and his mom at home.  He takes care of her and is always there for her so by senior year, he is lost and doesn't know what to do for the next year about college.  He wants to continue playing football because he loves the sport, but he doesn't want to leave his mother behind for her to take care of herself.  Schools that are 10-12 hour drives away are interested in him but he is hesitant on whether to accept the recruit or not.  He is the type of kid who is very serious and almost never smiles, and on top of that he has to take control of the team being one of the captains and the starting quarterback: the player who controls the game.  

The party animal of the team is Don Billingsley.  He is the popular one who likes to drink, go to parties, and not worry about anything besides having fun and playing football.  His father is a former football start at Permian and is now a town drunk.  You notice in the movie that the relationship between him and his father is not the best relationship at all.  Don is more of a man and more mature acting than his father is.  This affects Billingsley's play and attitude in the game of football.  His aggression comes from his home and his never quit attitude comes from his father who keeps beating down on him to try his best.  The father is embarrassed watching practice or games because Don tends to fumble the ball a lot.  This puts the father in a position where all he wants to do is have his son hold the ball.  He literally beats him because of it.  Billingsley goes through this everyday of his life and is probably the reason why he is such a partier: because he doesn't want to go home to his drunk dad.  You notice these problems he goes through throughout the entire movie that by the end when you see them two hug after a tough lose against the Dallas Carter in the state championship, you can't do much besides tear up just a little bit.   

I can relate to this movie in many ways.  Being a former high school football player, I know what it feels like to go through the thrill of a game and season.  I went through all the ups and downs a season and team can have and I have experienced a whole lot.  My junior year in high school, our team was projected to do very good.  Our goal from the beginning of the season was to win state and we did everything we possibly could have done to do it.  We had a star running back named Valentino Perrina, who is a very good friend of mine.  He was looked at the be one of the best running backs ever to play out of Massachusetts with 25 touchdowns in only the first 6 games out of the season.  We were absolutely blowing teams out every single game having almost no competition in the beginning of the season.  It got to point where if the other team even scored, it would be a negative even if we up by over 40 points. The seventh game of the season was against the town of Belmont.  Valentino was playing a hell of game, as usual, and we were beating them by over 20 points in just the first quarter.  Valentino takes the ball for a run, takes a juke and gets tackled.  Seconds later, he is on the ground screaming and the entire stadium went silent.  We figured he was such a strong kid that he would get up and shake it off, but no.  We had to send two of our players to pick him up and carry him off the field.  He couldn't walk.  A few days later we find out it's a torn ACL and that he was not going to be able to play for the rest of the season.  All of his division 1 college looks all disappeared.  Our team was hurt and the entire community did not know what we would do without Perrina.  Throughout the season, we started building up as a team.  We had a tough time playing teams after the lose of our running back, but by the end of the season we were blowing teams out again.  We won the league, made it to playoffs and beat Dracut 20-6 to exceed into the Massachusetts Division 2 State Championship held at Gillette Stadium.  With our ups and downs of the season, we learned to work together as one and we ended up winning the state championship 26-0 against Natick: a team that was ranked overall 4th in the entire state.  It was an absolute underdog story and just thinking about it now gives me the chills.  I have lived through a life very much similar to the characters in "Friday Night Lights" and it all has to do with the lifestyle of a high school football player.

I wrote my paper on how sports is related to family.  Not the family as in our internal blood related family, but in a way where the team will act as brothers or sisters.  To me, a family is more than just the people that are related to us.  It can be more than just our parents, brothers or sisters.  A family consist of two or more people that can say and do anything with each other.  Where working together is very comfortable and easy to do and when they do, their successful.  These people would do anything for one another whether it is protecting each other to just talking to them.  Everything that has to do with each other just feels right and not one thing in the world can break that bond.  They all love each other, trust one another, and laugh and cry together.  They do almost everything the same way and for this reason, they are considered family.
 
We all see this a lot around us throughout our entire life.  Many examples of it can be shown on the big screen or even personally in one's actual real life.  It is shown in the movie "Miracle" of how the group of kids chosen to play for the 1980 Hockey Olympic games did not get along when first chosen.  These kids later on began working like a family by beating every team in the Olympics, especially the Russians, and taking home the gold.  It is also shown in the movie "Remember the Titans" and their problem between the blacks and whites playing on the same team.   It shows the struggles they go through as a team, but it also shows the relationships gained over time. The kids end up not thinking about what the color of their teammates skin is but the love they all have for the game.  They ended up playing with love for each other and for the game by winning the state championship going undefeated in the season.

I was able to personally go through this same situation in real life.  Going into my senior year's football season, we were not projected to do that great in the season.  We were defending division two state Champions, being ranked third overall in the entire state in all divisions and went 13-0 my junior year.  Out of those twenty two starters on the team, eighteen of them were seniors and were going to be gone for my senior year season.  Without me even starting the year before, I was elected to be a captain for my senior year only having a few minutes of playing time throughout the entire junior year season.  As a captain, I had the responsibility to take control of the team and to do things as a team.  During pre-season and also during the season, the two other captains and I held meetings and gatherings to go out as an entire team.  We would play pick up games of either basketball, football and even water balloon fights outside of practice.  We would go to lunch as a team to the same restaurant every Saturday after film and workout and we ended up doing everything together during the season.  We all became a family and we used the word very often while playing the game.  That year, we ended up going undefeated in the regular season, winning the league and making it to the superbowl once again for the second year in a row held at Gillette Stadium.  That game, we ended up losing 29-26 in the very last minute of the game.  It was the most upsetting and depressing lose, but to be able to spend that moment with my brothers, I wouldn't have changed that for the world.  To a team that our community and surrounding communities were talking very shallow about to come up on top like that and go 12-1 in the entire season was a very big success in my books.  It wouldn't have mattered if we won the superbowl, to even get that far and have a game played the way we played, was absolutely amazing.  We all came together throughout the year and became a family.  We played like a family every game, every quarter, and every snap.  We ended up becoming the most successful class to ever graduate from our high school going 36-2 in the three years playing varsity football.  Being able to play football with our best friends as a family was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, highlights of our high school career and I keep in touch with almost every single one of the kids on that team.  Whenever we go home for break, we all end up doing things together once again as a family and team and that bond will never leave.

Sports is a way to create relationships that will last for an entire life.  It teaches us to work together and succeed in a fashionable manner by treating each other with respect. It has almost the same exact qualities a family has when it comes to the players, and just like a family, those qualities with each other can last forever.