Читать книгу Racing Toward Recovery. The Extraordinary Story of Alaska Musher Mike Williams Sr. онлайн

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Nobody told us how to do it. If you have ever seen all of the pads that go on under the uniform you will know it is not as easy as it sounds to figure out what goes where. We put the hip pads on and then we tried to figure where the piece that was the tail guard went. We wondered what it was for. Was it for our backsides? Or was it to protect our private parts? We didn’t know. We figured that it was to protect our private parts in case we got hit by a helmet on a play. So we agreed on how to put the pads on and ran out to practice. It was very uncomfortable. You had all of these Eskimo kids running around on the football field being very uncomfortable because we had the pads on backwards. Ouch.

We couldn’t move very well and we were grimacing and frowning. All of the coaches looked at us and they were smiling, then they were snickering and then they were laughing. We made the adjustments quickly.

At that time my body was built very differently than it is built now. I was about five-foot-seven inches tall and weighed around 150 pounds. I was also a pretty fast runner, so because of my speed they made me a running back. I was a sprinter back then. Mostly I played positions for a smaller, fast guy. I was a running back throughout my football career and I also returned punts and kickoffs. On defense I was a linebacker. Everybody played offense and defense both at the time. I loved playing football. I really loved it. Our team was the Chemawa Braves.