Friday, Saturday, Sunday in Texas by Nick Eatman

Author:Nick Eatman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062433312
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

MORE PAIN THAN RAIN

Friday

In Plano, Texas, as well as just about every town throughout the Lone Star State, and even in most places across the nation, lasting memories are made on Friday nights in the fall.

But there’s always one Saturday morning for nearly all high school students, whether they wear a uniform or not, that can have a lasting impact on their future.

It’s not the same Saturday for everyone, and in some cases it can be taken on a different day, but rest assured, there are classrooms full on Saturdays across the state with nervous seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds holding nothing but a sharpened number-two pencil.

On this Saturday morning in mid-October, Brandon Stephens was among several students from all over the area who were ready to take the SAT. The standardized test, along with the ACT, is a widely used examination that colleges use to determine admissions for prospective students, along with their grades in the classroom.

When compared to football, daily tests and quizzes are like practices. Report cards are equal to a Friday night game. But the SAT is the state championship game of tests.

With the enormous implications of this exam, Stephens was doing his best to focus. As the star running back of a Plano team that was just eliminated from playoff contention the night before, he was crushed inside. As a senior and one of the team leaders, Stephens dreamed of finishing his stellar prep career in the playoffs, possibly even at AT&T Stadium in Arlington or NRG Stadium in Houston in the state championship. Instead, he knew he had just two more games left as a high school player.

But like many of his teammates, Stephens was so much more than just a football player. For him, the phrase “student-athlete” was indeed in the right order because he dedicated as much time and energy to his schoolwork and grades as he did to football, if not more. And his parents, Tim and Charlotte, certainly wouldn’t have had it any other way.

In fact, during Stephens’ junior season, he brought home an uncharacteristic C on his report card.

“That didn’t go well,” he recalled. “My family doesn’t do Cs.”

And even though Stephens had a battle with an advanced placement history course during the fall of his senior season, and at one point worried that he was going down the path of another C, he pulled through and managed to record a high B.

Now, as he sat in a classroom full of other students from various local high schools preparing for the test, Stephens seemingly might have had less pressure than his peers who were still waiting for acceptance to their college of choice. Stephens had already verbally committed to Stanford back in early September on a full athletic scholarship.

But Stanford is considered by many to be the “Ivy League” of the West Coast, so the pressure to deliver high marks was likely no different, if not even greater, than the pressure Stephens felt to carry his team to victories on Friday nights.

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