How working at Vinny's Pizza at 9 Year's old turned me to an All Conference football player?

Vinny's pizza was a small spot in Hollywood, FL. My brother and I were always thinking of ways to make more money as we saw our mother struggle to make ends meet. This was perfect for us...so we thought. Our good friend Tyrone introduced us to Vinny and the rest is history. Vinny offered us positions as flyer carriers for different neighborhoods. That is just a fancy word for Vinny dropping us in the neighborhood with a bundle of flyers to hang on every door we could.

I remember those days like it was yesterday. The sun was beaming hot and I would have done anything to be around my brother. I admired him because he was a natural born leader. He also was one of the best athletes I have ever been around. In fact, my brother was timed at a 4.39 40 yard dash in eighth grade. We had several private schools in the area who wanted him to play football for them. But my brother made some bad decisions that led him towards a different path.

Let's get back to the Vinny experience....the routine was to ride our bikes to the pizzeria. We would place our bikes in the back of the restaurant and someone would drive us to the neighborhood where we would work. We would split up and start hanging flyers on different doors. Our day's work would end three hours later. Vinny would pick us up and pay us about 20 bucks a piece. I think Vinny took advantage of us now, but back then at 9 years old it was as if I was a millionaire. It's funny, but we would always go to Popeye's chicken after work.

I guess that part has not changed as I still like it when my wife has a hot meal prepared after a hard day's work. lol! The point of the story about Vinny's was I loved the hustle because I enjoyed the reward of being paid. That is why I think some parents need to let their kids earn the training they desire with their trainers. I guarantee most kids will value it more when it took their own sweat to earn the dollars to pay for training.

I learn the value of hard work paying off when I worked at Vinny's. The drive to earn my reward kept me walking from door to door when I was tired. I did not need a reminder from my mother or anyone else. The bible talks about a man that does not work does not eat. I am paraphrasing, but that is the gist of it. How does this relate to being an all-conference?

Well, I learned that anything worth having will require me to put in work. Anyone that has played ball with me or hit the chamber with me know I lay  it on the line. I always wanted to practice like there was no tomorrow. I wanted to win every sprint during conditioning because I was not afraid of set backs. This helped me when I realized that the last schools that were looking at me that I was interested in were not going to offer me. The schools I was looking at were Pennsylvania, Illinois State, and USF. They all said' I was too small.

The hard work mentality kicked in when I realized I was going to have to go to a D3. I was thankful that I had somewhere to go as some people do not get the opportunity to play after HS. I hit the campus at 5'9" and weighed 145. I vowed to myself that I was going to leave campus a stronger version of myself. It helped me make the difficult decisions I had to make later on. What were those decisions you ask?

Some of the decisions were training when I did not want to, drinking those terrible protein shakes, eating when I did not want to eat, going to the library when I did want to, and getting extra help at the Academic skills center. I wanted to succeed in every area of my life. I wanted to be a better player, better student, and a better Christian. God changed my life on that college campus.

I recall one football practice session that tested me mentally. I was having an off day and I was exhausted at the DB position. In fact, we ran close to 40 plays back to back that day. Coach would not remove me from the DB position because he said I was not playing hard. The WR kept changing and they were running deep routes. It did not help that it was raining and cold. This is when you find out what you are made of. That day I had a flash back of how hard it was to get here and the early days of Vinny's pizzeria kicked in. I wish I could say I kept the WR's from catching the ball. Coach stated that if I let one more WR catch the ball in front of me just to make a tackle the team would be sorry. Our WR caught a 15 yard stop route. We did 150 up downs that day. I could have folded that day because that was a tough day.

I took it as a lesson learned as I started demanding more from myself. In fact, I had an opportunity to be tested again. That is the thing about life you only fail if you stop. Some made that choice and quit that team. But that was not an option for me because I had a goal that I knew required hard work. We were preparing for our toughest opponent in the conference and coach made us run after each session. We would have individual drills and run two gassers right afterward. This sequence followed after 1on1's, team, etc...but I made up in mind coach would not break me. In fact, I was laughing as I made all my required times on every single one. I embraced this as just part of the process. This attitude followed me into the games.

You are who you are most consistently. I tried to be mentally tough and work hard in every area of my life. This way it would become a habit. The challenge came the week I faced the WR with the most receiving yards in the conference. It was like a rocky fight. I studied game film, hit the chamber hard, and practiced hard that week. The end result is that he had 0 catches that game. My hope is that you can see that the take home message is that hard work is something that can be developed and helps change every area in your life. It will take hard work to become all-conference in every area in your life.