Time to Hang Up the Jersey

Photo taken by John Finnell
© All Rights Reserved

My freshman year with the Trinity Tigers has been a great experience, and it has defiantly come with its up’s and downs, and its highs and its lows.  Our win against Howard Payne was a big high!  It took us till the second overtime until we finally prevailed; the feeling after the win was unexplainable.  Another great experience for me was our first away game against Birmingham Southern.  The trip was a blast, and we got a big win on the road against an undefeated team. 

The year also had some low points too.  Training camp was brutal and took some getting used to.  The 40 test at the beginning was camp was intense.  I don’t think I have ever been more tired in my life than I was after running the 40 test then going to practice, it felt like my lungs were going to collapse.  Another low was our breath taking loss to Millsaps on alumni weekend.  We let the game slip away from us in the final seconds losing by one point on a two point conversion that they completed at the end of the game.

Although the season is coming to an end and pretty soon it will be time to hang up the jersey until next year, I will never forget the memories of my freshman year of football.

The Wrong Turn

Photo taken by Travis B.
© All Rights Reserved

This past weekend the Trinity Tigers traveled deep into the mountains of Tennessee to do battle with the Sewanee Tigers. Strangely enough the battle that took place on the football field wasn’t the main battle that we would have to win that Saturday.

After a great game where our defense took everything into their hands, allowing only 3 points, the whole team felt pretty good. On the bus ride back to the airport we were all celebrating a much needed conference win when Parker noticed something. He had used his phone’s GPS to see how far we were from the airport and ended up noticing that we had missed out turn about 30 miles back and were now headed the wrong way. This was a critical mistake by our bus driver. We were already on a strict schedule because we were losing an hour due to the time zone change between Tennessee and Atlanta. Now we were and extra hour behind schedule due to the missed turn and would have to rush in order to catch our flight.

We arrived at the airport in Atlanta around 8:25 and our flight departure time was 9:00. It was GO TIME!!! After 20 minutes of hectic running most of us had made it to the gate just in time to grab a quick snack (if the coaches weren’t looking) before we got on the plane. The rest of us would have to deal with the small packages of pretzels the stewardesses pass out. The fortunate thing, however, was that we got the win, and everyone that flew down with us made the flight back!

The Tigers Hit the Road



This picture was taken by Nykolas McKissic



After losing two tough games at home by less than 10 points combined to Rhodes and Millsaps I couldn’t help but feel disappointed.  In both games we were so close to winning we could almost taste it yet victory was not in our grasp and now it was time to go on the road.

Our first road game was against Birmingham Southern in Alabama.  It was my first away football game in College and I had no idea what to expect.  I heard so many different roomers from the upper classman on the team, who said that freshman had to carry all bags and they had to sleep on the floor, but all these things didn’t bother me though because I was just happy to make the travel squad.  We have close to 100 people on the team but we are only allowed to travel 52 so I felt like it was a big honor to get to travel.

After a Friday full of flying and bus riding I was very ready to finally get down to business on Saturday.  That Saturday was the perfect day for football.  The temperature was around 75 degrees and there was a very light breeze that kept the field turf cool.  When we took the field that day we all knew what we came here to do and that was win a ball game.  After 4 long quarters of fighting we did just that.  It felt good to be back on a winning path after beating the 3-0 Birmingham Southern on the road.  We are now ready to show the rest of the conference what we are really made of.

Road Trip by Nykolas McKissic is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

A hard loss but a Happy Birth Day

*This picture was taken by Melinda Finnell

Saturday September the 18^th was a hard day for the Trinity Tiger Football team.  Rhoades College came down to San Antonio and bested us on our own turf.  It was only the second time in the last 15 years that Trinity had lost a conference game at home in Tiger Stadium which why it hit everyone including me really hard.  It is safe to say that it was definitely a hard loss to swallow.

For me however the sorrow of a hard loss could not come close in comparing to the happiness I felt that Saturday.  That day was my girlfriend Jessie’s Birthday, and she had traveled all the way from Cleburne to see our game that night.  Although the game didn’t turn out the way we had hoped it would we couldn’t have been happier to see each other.  It has been a hard adjustment getting used to being away from each other for so long.  The fact that she has a year left in high school at Cleburne, and the fact that I have been staying busy with school and football at Trinity, has made it hard for us to see each other as much as we would like to.  This is why we were over joyed when we finally were able to see each other again.  Even though we lost the game that night, for the both of us it was the best day we could have possibly asked for.

Football Photo 1 by Melinda Finnell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Fun Begins!!

It was that time of year again! The dog days of August were over. There were no more two-a-days in 105 degree heat, no more early breakfast checks, and no more late night meetings. It was time for the fun to start, and I couldn’t have been more ready!

The first opportunity for me to play against someone other than my teammates was a scrimmage game vs. Texas Lutheran. As I laid awake in bed on Friday night I couldn’t believe that I was about to suit up and scrimmage against another team the next morning. It was an indescribable feeling. I had been playing football since I was a young boy and had always dreamed of the day when I would have the chance to play at the college level. On Saturday morning I realized that my dream had finally come through.

The scrimmage was a great experience for me. I was so glad my mom and dad came down and brought my little brother with them. When I met up with them after the game, seeing my little brother reminded me of the days when I was only 9 years old like him and how I couldn’t wait to play my first pewee football game. Now I was only a week away from playing in my first college football game. The fun was about to begin!