“Dear Summer, I know you gon’ miss me
Jay-Z on “Dear Summer”
For we been together like Nike Airs and crisp tees”
It’s still hard to comprehend. This August is the first August in thirteen years I won’t be gearing up for Fall Camp. More than a decade. More than half of my life.
If you do quick math and add it up it’s around 390 days. That’s more than a year’s worth of Augusts that I’ve dedicated to football. Imagine a yearlong camp! Yeah aight! I’ll be honest, though, it’s a weird feeling.
To be real with you, I miss it.
It’s hard to escape the images of camp starting up on TV and social media. That feeling that football is here is one of the best feelings out there. It’s in the air. I’ve seen a lot my former teammates who are still competing post their progress pictures from the last 6 months or their pre-camp flicks in their uniforms. Honestly, it’s a different kind of FOMO.
Even though I miss it, I’m good on it.
I’ve made my decision to walk away from football and I’m still at peace with that decision. That doesn’t mean I can’t feel a certain way, though. Whenever you ask a former student-athlete the part they miss most about playing, most of the time their answer will be the locker room. For me that is what I miss the most, both literally and figuratively.
I literally miss the image of the locker room in certain situations. There is nothing like walking into the locker room six hours into a day of Fall camp, having already had meetings and practice, and everything else that’s on a typical camp schedule, and seeing different players slumped around the locker room trying to catch some sleep before the next activity. Lights off. Not much being said. All you see is the light from phones shining in the different player’s faces. If you need to find something you turn on your flashlight on your phone. You hear the occasional “Turn that sh*t off” if somebody accidentally, or purposefully, turns on one of the lights.
There’d be players marking their territory on the couches with their blankets, pillows, and other miscellaneous items. If you couldn’t get a couch, then you’d see padding from inside locker cubbies on the ground used as a makeshift bed. Or there might be some who prefer the floor and nothing else. This isn’t like HardKnocks with the Houston Texans where you have JJ Watt bringing a whole bed to the facility during camp. You have to make do with what you got. Me, I’d try to finesse a couch or use the training room table to rest my eyes and get much-needed treatment. There is nothing like it.
Figuratively, I miss the idea of the locker room, the brotherhood of it. I miss the conversations. I miss the jokes about the grind of camp. That laughter brought about from thinking to each other “Man what the heck they got us doing? We got three more weeks of this?” And you’re only one week in. And you just finished your first padded practice. You ask, “What were they talking about with CARA hours?” as the hours start to catch up and you begin to feel tired to the point it’s the new normal. Nah but this is what you love to do and there’s no better feeling.
The unspoken words are even better. That understanding based off somebody’s body language about how they are doing. That walk to the dorm with each other after a long day nothing needed to be said. Only to start watching film to correct your mistakes from practice earlier in the day and to preview the installs for tomorrow’s day of practice as the cycle repeats.
There is nothing like going through a shared experience with a group of people that you feel like only you can relate to. That’s what I miss the most about football. The camaraderie. Sure, every team throughout the different divisions will participate in their own Fall camp at some point during August, but there’s that feeling of “y’all didn’t go through what we went through.” It’s a different kind of bond. One month of round-the-clock grinding will do that to you.
It’s not just Fall camp either. In-season, winter workouts, summer sessions, you name it. I have similar memories about them all and I have reminisced on them a lot over these past few months.
“Listen here, Summer, baby
I just believe it’s the right thing to do……And I know you put me on my feet and all, but
Jay-Z on “Dear Summer”
I mean, it’s time for me to grow
You gotta let me go baby, you gotta let me go”
In March I decided I was going to move on from football.
It had been something I quietly contemplated within myself for a whole year. However, my love for the sport, my love for my teammates, and a feeling like I didn’t see it all the way through kept me coming back. It was a constant battle of weighing the pluses and the minuses and often those pluses I named outweighed the minuses. That began to change over time. My last year didn’t exactly go how I thought it would.
In 2020, that second semester of my junior year my knee felt the best it ever had. I was a year removed from my third surgery and I was feeling comfortable as ever. I felt like I was doing everything right. I was eating right, sleeping right, and living right. I was in a great state of mind. Then the pandemic hit. It’s funny, for the first time in my four years of college I was healthy enough to compete in spring practices, but then we were hit with a once-in-a-century global pandemic and I’d miss out on that. In the second week of March, we were sent home before Spring Break, with a lot of uncertainty on how the pandemic would play out. The question was “when would we be back?” When Coach Bell addressed us before break we didn’t know that would be the last time we would be together as a team for the next three months. A whole second half of our semester apart from one another and half of the summer. 2020 was an experience in itself.
Yet, one silver lining through it all was that I had more time to commit to my interests outside of football. The pandemic and racial climate going on in the country amplified the need for programming for our student-athletes at UMass. I was able to dedicate more time to helping create these spaces for my own team as well as other student-athletes and students at UMass. I was able to march in Boston for what I believed in. For George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others. I was able to perform a whole research project based on the Black student-athlete experience at a predominantly white institution (PWI). I was allowed the time to dedicate myself to things that mattered to me outside of sport and I was loving it. I was loving the lack of anxiety and stress that football so often brought me. Seeds I had planted from my freshman, sophomore, and junior years were also beginning to blossom at the same time. It was as if I was beginning to outgrow football.
Soon enough I had to prioritize football again with the return to campus and the resumption of in-person football activities. However, by the time we got to Fall camp the pandemic continued to worsen. Discussions between the different FBS conferences in the country resulted in the postponement of their seasons, so we followed suit. We only made it five Fall camp practices before we were put on hold, the season presumably canceled. Then, within a month the tide turned again as the #WeWantToPlay movement grew. In less than a month we elected to restart athletic activities and have a season. All of this took a toll on me and ultimately the season wasn’t what I imagined it’d be.
For months, due to the uncertainty of the situation, I was able to get a glimpse at life without football. I began to get comfortable with it. I began to like it. I began to want nothing else other than it. So when my commitments reverted back to pre-pandemic I felt ready to move on.
Throughout this process I talked with my parents and my siblings looking for any advice they might have about these feelings I was having and what I should do. I leaned on them during this time. To them they would be happy with whatever decision I made. To them I accomplished everything I needed to and had nothing to prove. To them I made the most of my time as a student-athlete. They saw how football had impacted me as a person and how I had leveraged it to the max. So, when it was time to return for winter workouts this year, the winter of my senior year, I had the same discussions again. This time more-so with myself. I was graduating in the Spring and looking to pursue graduate school so any move I would make would be dependent on that. I figured I’d give it one last hoorah at most, depending on my grad school situation, but I was still uncertain. I had already submitted school applications and knew that I might not be able to juggle the two commitments in the Fall, nor would I want to.
So, I decided to move on. It was perfect timing too. In the same week I also found out that I’d been accepted to one of the programs I applied for. It was an amazing opportunity and I knew I would have to jump on it. When I decided to close one door it led to opening another. Concluding one chapter began another. I saw it all the way through.
“I’m done for now, so one for now
Jay-Z on “Dear Summer”
Possibly forever, we had fun together
But like all good things, we must come to an end
Please show the same love to my friends
Dear Summer”
I’m sure I’ll feel a lot of mixed emotions this football season, but I’m going to embrace it. I’m sure my mind will wander while I’m in classes and I’ll reminisce on mat drills or dawn patrol. I might think about the moments in the weight room or the dinners out with teammates. I might think about those days rushing to an 8:30AM class clear across campus fresh out of a morning lift. Whatever I think about, I will look back with love for my experience. These memories will stay with me forever. I can’t wait to support the team in everything they do. I can’t wait to attend games at McGuirk with my spectator glasses on. Nothing but a memory of the installs and flashbacks of plays from practice that might look similar. I can’t wait to watch the Tight End room absolutely go crazy. I can’t wait for this team to get everything they deserve. Best believe I’m supporting this team to the fullest. You won’t be able to tell me nothing when the team makes its first bowl game. That day is coming. Believe that!
Thank you, football. I’m forever grateful for what this game has given me. But like all good things, we must come to an end. Please show the same love to my friends. Dear Football.
About the author
Solomon Siskind is a sport management graduate student at the University of Massachusetts. A former student-athlete, Siskind is interested in the sociology of sport with research interests in how race and gender impact sport.