Mason Atkinson

Mrs. Thompson 

Senior Capstone Project

1 April 2024

Capstone Essay

 

Throughout my high school experience, I think I learned a lot from football. It helped me stride and success throughout all my 4 years at high school. It wasn't just some sport that I played and had fun with, it had so much more to it and it truly changed me as a person for the rest of my life. It taught me different life skills and how to become a better person growing up in the future. It helped me follow my SLV slos and become a better person around my peers and in society. 

 

During my entire football season, me and my team did a lot of different things for our community to benefit them. During my junior year season, me and a couple of my teammates volunteered at a roaring camp during a festival. Picking up trash and cleaning the place without pay for 9 hours, was a great experience that brought me and my team closer to our community. Doing things like that can change your output in life and make you feel for the other people that you are surrounded by. Another thing that me and my teammates did to connect with the community was to participate in the Felton parade. We did this yearly and it helped us become way cooler with our community than we were before. It was also a great experience that showed our community that we cared a lot about them and that we will represent them 

the best that we can. All of these different experiences I had through my football seasons in high school made me a better person to others and my community as a whole. 

 

During my years in high school football, I had a lot of different situations where I had to do collaborative work and communicate with others. In my sophomore year of high school, we had a fundraiser where my entire football team sold pizza cards to families around the valley to raise money for our program. We had to walk up to people's houses and talk to them about buying pizza cards to help raise money for our team. During this experience, I had to step out of my comfort zone and talk to strangers trying to convince them to spend their money. I am not big on trying to convince people to donate money because I'm not good at talking to others that I don't know that well. The whole experience was good because it improved my communication and collaboration with my other teammates for our school and team. Overall the time I spent with my teammates doing this and talking to people around our community was great and it made me a better person.

 

My time with my team was spent trying to make all of us into men and to grow up. Throughout football, I had to learn to think a lot. During games, you don't have time to sit there and think about what is going to happen next. Things happen in a split second and you don't have time to waste. You have to think fast and swiftly without actually thinking at all. Football taught me to think fast and not to hesitate when it comes to anything in an intense situation. Football also really taught me to problem solve in and outside of the classroom. It's not like math problems, but just life problems. Understanding how to help others in need, and how to collaborate with others to get stuff done. 

 

Football has been beneficial to my process of growing up to be an adult. It has taught me life lessons that I will never get anywhere else, it has also taught me how important it is to create a brotherhood. To keep a group of people that you have been through hard times with you at all times. That you would do anything for them and you have dedicated your loyalty to your brothers. There have been kids on my team I'd never thought I'd like or be friends with, but after these 4 years, I've realized that they are different from everyone else. I've been through my worst and best times with them and I'll never forget them till the day I die. Football is the best thing that could've happened to me in high school and I will never forget any of the memories that I made throughout it.