The crowd was long gone and the lights were now dim. He walked out onto the artificial grass, looking at the red, white and blue confetti on the field. He took one step repeated by 100 more. As he reached midfield, he gazed at the goalpost at the other end. He paused and sat down near the spot where it had all taken place.
A beeping sound from a truck backing up was the only sound he heard in the dome. He closed his eyes and focused on the events of three hours earlier and in his head. The cheers were as loud as a jet engine. Then world went still except for his beating heart. The ball was snap and then the kick. He watched as the football soared 56 yards through the uprights. Then he saw the explosion of joy on the sideline. And the world went still once again. The next thing he knew he was in the air, riding on the shoulders of men who weighed twice what he did.
He opened his eyes and thought about the first time he had kicked a ball. It was a soccer ball that had soared nearly the length of his Pee Wee field. The Good Lord had given him a cannon for a leg and that was the moment the world discovered it. He could still see the stunned looks on the other teams’ faces. Seven years later, barely 140 pounds dripping wet, he had tried out for his high school football team. The rest is, as they say, history.
He kicked hundreds of kicks. And millions more in his mind.
Visualization was a trick he had learned early on. Theater of the mind was what he liked to call it. He saw every kick before he made it. He smelled the grass. He felt the wind. He heard the crowd cheering. He played the movie of his success in his head. Over and over and over and over. And then he repeated it.
When the doctor had told him that he had cancer, he used the same movies to help him heal. He pictured the chemo attacking the cancer cells. He pictured the doctor showing him clean scans. Like every other opponent he had faced, he had beat the beast. He felt the scar on his side and looked back downfield at the goal post.
The goal post. The perfect visualization for the goals he chose to reach. His job was to put a brown football through yellow uprights. He had set a seemly unreachable goal — him raising the Championship trophy. Six field goals tonight. He was the difference in the margin of victory. And the last one of the night was the game winner in overtime. He smiled. Tonight was the final reel in a movie he had been playing in his mind since he was 14. He raised that trophy. Mission accomplished.
The difference between success and failure was what played between his ears. It was the movie in his mind that had made the difference. He was the writer, producer and director of tonight’s outcome. He just sat there for a moment smiling, enjoying the silence of the dome around him. Then he got up, brushed the confetti off his butt, and headed back to the locker room. He had an ongoing celebration to rejoin.
He felt his scar and enjoyed the moment he had previously replayed in his head so many times. The kicker walked off the field a champion.
Beautiful!