I'll never forget my high school's year-ender football party in my grade 12 year.
Despite their loss in the six-man championship game, the party was upbeat. I remember one football player saying, "We are going to drink that loss away" with a smile on his face.
But around midnight at the party, a very good friend of mine just broke down crying. You have to understand he wasn't an immature young girl who wanted attention; he was a 6-foot-2, 200-pound linebacker who laughed when he broke his hand in a hockey fight because as he put it, "I'd rather have a broken hand than a broken face."
He didn't really say why he was crying. But everyone knew it was because he just played his last high school football game, and to add insult to injury, it was in a losing effort.
A couple minutes later a young lady came up to him and said, "It's just a game." My buddy didn't say anything. She later walked away with a puzzled look on her face.
From her perspective, it was just a game. She was calling it how she saw it.
But she wasn't there when he woke up at 6 a.m. Monday-Friday for practice to prepare for his weekly game. Nor was she there when he moved to B.C. for three weeks in the summer to train for "just a game."
That game wasn't 60 minutes of exercise to keep him busy. It was a way for him to make his father proud, relinquish anger when his girlfriend broke up with him, gain popularity in the school, and most importantly, open up doors for university scholarships to better his life.
That loss wasn't just coming up short on the scoreboard. It was failing to walk away from his high school football career with a championship despite going above and beyond what the program asked from him.
It turned out that was his last meaningful football game because he never got past the practice roster in university ball and an injury stopped him from playing in the Canadian Junior Football League the following year.
He still talks about his last football game. He dwells on whether a step to the left or a step to the right would have changed the outcome.
My friend doesn't define the majority of high school athletes, though. For some, it is just a game. They spend their summers playing videogames and lying on the beach at the lake with their upcoming season not even in the back of their minds. Sports are more or less just an activity to keep them busy.
However, for the athletes who travel to great lengths, skip parties for gym sessions, and have scholarship opportunities - it's not just a game. It is a self-esteem builder, an outlet to let out frustration, a way to open college doors, and for some, the best thing they have going for them.
All that being said, it is unfair to downplay how significant some games are for athletes who spend countless hours preparing for them.
Through their eyes it's not just a game, it is their life.
