The Drill With The Pursuit Angles

There's a drill we used to do in high school football that I only now realize applies to life.

And look, I know how that sounds, but this isn't a LinkedIn post. Just... stay with me.

This particular football drill was for us linebackers to practice tackling. Our job depended on quick discernment—it was all about pursuit angles and determining where the ball carrier would be before they got there, and then sprinting toward it.

The catch is that you had to be moving while answering the following questions:

• Who's trying to block me out of the way?

• Is the offense running the ball or passing it?

• Which side of the field are they moving toward?

I loved playing linebacker. You had to keep moving, otherwise you'd never catch up to the momentum of the play. And I was quite good at reading blocking schemes quickly and getting to the ball before the offense could cut me off. But after a standout freshman year, I dislocated my shoulder during the first week of my sophomore season... for the first time. I kept playing, and it kept happening. Then it happened to my other shoulder, too, and I ended up having back-to-back surgeries.

That sidelined me for a full year.

So when I was unable to play my junior season, the coaching staff offered me a job, which is how I wound up coaching the freshman team.

I almost said no, though. I'd never coached before and wasn't sure I'd be any good at it. Sure, I'd been a camp counselor for a few years by then, but those kids were 7 and 8 years old. The guys I'd be coaching would be 14 and 15. Truthfully, I was worried I wouldn't be taken seriously. I thought my own peers would mock me and the players on the freshman team would blow me off. When I'd gotten hurt, my playing suffered and I stopped believing in myself.

Thankfully, one of my coaches hadn't.

Coach Britton insisted I coach with him. And when I look back on my high school football experience, the memory that stands out most wasn't our state championship game at Gillette Stadium or even the 9-hour bus ride to Baltimore when I became best friends with Tommy... it's the time I coached a group of freshman through the drill with the pursuit angles for the first time.

It was seeing it click for them, one by one, because of how I'd explained and demonstrated my decision-making. Without that, I probably wouldn't have thought myself capable of becoming a snowboard instructor. And maybe I never would've gone to college in Vermont, or believed I could apply for the job that led me to move 2,000 miles away and start building a career in marketing.

If you'd asked me then if the drill with the pursuit angles would help me climb through corporate, I'm sure I'd have laughed. But if you told me it'd help keep me alive when learning to navigate my mental health, I'd have stopped laughing and listened. And if my coach hadn't shown me that other path, if he hadn't insisted I coach with him when I didn't believe in myself, maybe I'd have missed it.

All of it.

---

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
202/365

Is there someone who changed the course of your life? How?

onward.

For more on this daily column and The MAP Year Project, read the backstory here. And if you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along.