Part 2 (1/2)

At the end of that first week my parents sat me down. It was clear to them that if these symptoms didn't stop soon, I would have to give up football. It was only a game, and they were not going to medicate me to play a game. My mom was particularly concerned, because she has dealt with Meniere's disease all her life. It's a condition of the inner ear that, for her, affects her balance. She wondered if I might have the same thing, especially since roller coasters, merry-go-rounds, and similar things have always made me ill.

Still, I didn't want to give up football, but I'd learned that the scriptures make it clear we are to honor our mothers and fathers. My siblings and I were fortunate to have parents who made that easy to fulfill-at least we could see they deserved to be honored by us whether we always demonstrated it or not. But it wasn't until later-when I wasn't with them all the time-that I began to realize all the reasons, in addition to the instruction in G.o.d's Word, that they deserved not only our respect and praise, but to be honored and loved. They cared for us, protected us, and nurtured us so that we could grow into the people G.o.d wants us to be. They guided us along the path on which they believe He had created us to walk. They did whatever it took to make sure following G.o.d's wisdom and direction was the path we took.

Well, my mom prayed with me that evening. She and I knelt beside my bunk bed and prayed that G.o.d might take away whatever it was and heal me so I might be able to play football. If it was G.o.d's will. That was always the standard for them, in anything they prayed for: if it was G.o.d's will . . . they asked for it to be done. And for whatever reason you might wish to a.s.sign, after that night, I've never had another issue with my head while playing football.

Well, there was one issue. But that was much later.

Once I got over my initial sickness, the Lakesh.o.r.e Athletic a.s.sociation football program was a great place to grow up and compete. Not only did it give me my first experience at playing quarterback-the only position I've ever wanted to play-it also produced a lot of talent that flowed into the high schools all over the Jacksonville area and beyond. From my Pee Wee football team alone, we produced a number of Division I athletes, including guys who played for South Carolina, Louisville, Houston, West Virginia, and Florida. And there were others who might have made it that far except for falling by the wayside through low grades, drug use, or other problems that cut their athletic pursuits short.

After playing baseball for years at Normandy, at age eleven I was invited to play on a traveling baseball team, the Tidal Wave. Because they wanted us to sample and enjoy different sports and activities, my parents had always discouraged us from playing only one sport for the entire year; however, they did allow me to play on this traveling team. I played three or four seasons with them, and during that span we won hundreds of games, playing all over Florida and around the country. During the summers, we'd play maybe ten or eleven games a week-with two each Friday, Sat.u.r.day, and Sunday. I remember many Sundays where we'd leave church and I would change into my uniform in the car as we drove to a game.

At various times during those years on the traveling team, I was invited to play for teams in other states as well. I remember a couple in particular: one in Georgia and one in Texas. Here we were, just kids playing baseball, and for the sake of winning games, these people were willing to fly me to different parts of the country to play for them. My dad squashed that idea before it ever had a chance to take off. He was concerned with the time it would take away from the family and school studies, and he also worried that my arm would get overworked if he wasn't there to monitor my pitch count. He was a stickler for protecting our arms.

And, yes, he really did monitor my pitch count. After a great deal of talking with major league pitchers, Dad determined how much, in a game and in a week, I could throw without risking injury to my arm. One time in particular, Dad told our Tidal Wave coach, Matt Redding, that I had hit my pitch count. Before I'd joined the team, Dad and Coach Redding had already been good friends, which was probably why I was allowed to play on a traveling team in the first place, but this day, Dad was getting a bit upset with his friend, the Coach.

Dad walked over to him at one point and said, ”Matt. He's thrown enough.” He didn't have to remind Coach about the terms for our partic.i.p.ation on the team: only one pitching appearance per week, with a maximum of eighty-five pitches. Surprisingly, Coach didn't immediately respond, and Dad continued.

”Matt, either go out there and take him out, now, or I will. And if I have to do it, then it's the last time he'll ever play for this team.”

No one would ever claim that G.o.d gave Dad the gift of subtlety or diplomacy, at least not when he feels strongly about something, and especially when he feels strongly about something that involves one of his children.

Coach took me out. That may be the only time that they disagreed on anything, which makes it so memorable; Coach was really good, and Dad trusted him with me.

My dad never coached us formally in a team setting because of international trips and his irregular schedule. What he did was spend lots of time with us, teaching us not only to hit, but also to throw. Apparently, some people have even commented of late on that throwing motion.

Dad's fault.

He was not only focused on our arms, but also on our overall well-being. Eventually I felt that I'd taken working out with surgical tubing attached to doors as far as I wanted or could and had done push-ups and sit-ups, for hours, and I wanted to start on weights. My dad kept reminding me that Herschel Walker had turned out to be a pretty fair player with only push-ups and sit-ups, but it did little to dissuade me-I really wanted to start on weights.

”Not until you get your first pimple,” he would tell me. He was a health and human-performance major at Florida, and people in the athletic world had convinced my dad that there was no point in training with weights before p.u.b.erty, when the body starts manufacturing enough testosterone to be able to effectively begin to build muscle through weight training. I had no reason to doubt him, but that didn't stop me from asking. Over and over.

Finally, he gave in. He says it was because I had hit p.u.b.erty, while my recollection is that it was just a bit earlier than that. Either way, I finally got a weight set that we kept in the barn. I think Mom felt like the barn would give the furniture and other items in the house a level of protection. That was all I had asked for as a Christmas present, and it was a gift that allowed me to change and improve my training regimen.

I kept push-ups and sit-ups in my routine, doing four hundred of each, every day. I also began to add weights and certain exercises with them, but Dad wouldn't let me use any weight heavier than one with which I could do at least fifteen repet.i.tions. He was still being cautious, not wanting me to be injured or somehow stunt my growth or otherwise negatively impact the proper development of bones, tendons, and the like. In the process, I think I built up as much in endurance as I did in strength. As I began adding strength later, I think that foundation of stamina served me well, which was an expected plus.

At some point, still in Little League, I believed and imagined that everyone around me was also trying to improve. In retrospect, I'm not really sure how much most kids were training at that age, but at the time, I was convinced everyone was working hard to get better.

And that's when I adopted one of my mantras for getting stronger and better and for all my workouts: Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.

Because I a.s.sumed that everyone was trying to get better, I began looking for ways that I could get an edge, an advantage that would serve me in compet.i.tion. I would end up doing things above and beyond whatever was expected to get an edge. I also began working out at odd times of the day and night, thinking, I'll bet there are no other kids in Jacksonville working out right now. Whether that was actually true didn't really matter-what mattered to me was that I thought it was true. It was just another thing that motivated me to work longer and harder.

I'm sure that G.o.d made me in such a way that I was willing to work hard, but there was certainly a lot of parental encouragement and nurturing as well. From the earliest days I can remember, my parents always told me they believed G.o.d had big plans for me, even though they didn't know exactly what they were. Mom used to quote her paraphrase of Isaiah 64:4 over and over to me, We haven't even seen a G.o.d like ours who acts on behalf of the one who waits for Him.

My dad would also reinforce that promise of G.o.d. For my whole life, he has told me that he and Mom have always prayed for me, and knew that G.o.d had a special plan for me. They told all their children the same thing. That's true, of course, for me, for my brothers and sisters and for all of us, because G.o.d clearly has a plan for all of us. But my dad felt that somehow the plan G.o.d had laid out for me was going to involve a lot of visibility. He didn't say it exactly like that but, rather, more like this: ”Maybe it's through baseball or football, but somehow, some way, what we do in the Philippines to share Jesus with people, you'll be able to do and share right here in America, in ways that we'd never be able to. I can't walk into any high school to share the gospel, but you'll be able to. I believe that G.o.d is preparing the way for that to happen.”

That's a great blessing to give a child. To remind them, pray for them, and a.s.sure them that G.o.d has a great plan-in His terms and for His purposes-for their lives.

I tried to work as hard as possible in every area in order to live up to it. Waiting on the Lord, as referenced in the pa.s.sage from Isaiah that my mom always quoted, doesn't mean being complacent. It means understanding that He has a time and a plan, and that we're not the ones in control. In the meantime, however, we need to strive to use our gifts and abilities fully and to the best of our ability for whatever He does have in store for us, whenever the time comes. I was beginning to see more clearly that G.o.d always has His hand on us-preparing us for His purposes.

And I began to see that as not only a great blessing and promise, but a great responsibility.

Chapter Five.

A Fair Farewell.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

-PHILIPPIANS 4:13, NKJV.

After I'd been playing at Normandy and Lakesh.o.r.e for a while, it came time for me to start playing for a school. There was only one that interested me: Jacksonville Trinity Christian Academy.

I was the third in our family to play sports at Trinity Christian. Since we were all homeschooled, we needed a way and place to partic.i.p.ate in sports, and Trinity had provided that and had been a good home for us for years. As if the three of us playing wasn't enough, for years my dad had been videotaping every one of Trinity's games for the coaches' use, so it really was a family legacy that we were building at Trinity. And we continued to build it when I, as the third Tebow boy, began playing quarterback on Trinity's JV football team in the eighth grade.

We were undefeated during my eighth-grade year, and I was called up to the varsity team at the end of that season. (The varsity season lasts longer.) I didn't play at all that year on the varsity, however, but was biding my time for ninth grade.

After the season ended, I continued to train and lift as much as I could, but it wasn't until I was preparing for my freshman-year season at Trinity that I realized how much progress I'd been making. Before going into ninth grade, I went to a youth camp that featured, among other events, an arm-wrestling compet.i.tion. Robby was back from college and had gone along to serve as a counselor for the camp, while Peter and I were there as campers.

That compet.i.tion was one of the moments when I realized that all my extra hard work was beginning to pay off, providing me with an advantage I hadn't planned for. It was no surprise that Robby, as a college football player, made the finals at a high school camp, but as someone about to be a freshman, I certainly didn't expect to make it. Sure enough, though, I found myself in the finals against my brother. Of all people, my big brother.

The finals of the arm-wrestling compet.i.tion? Me, about to be a freshman in high school, against my brother Robby, a college football player, and six years older than me.

Funny, I just can't remember who won.

It was apparent, though, that all the additional training I'd been doing was having a real and noticeable impact on my strength. Seeing that progress and the results of it in different settings made me even more motivated to work hard.

Heading into that first year of high school football, we went on a church-planned weekend called the ”Burly Man Retreat,” in Hilliard, Florida, located about thirty minutes north of Jacksonville and just inside the FloridaGeorgia border. The events of that weekend have become the stuff of family legend and probably ill.u.s.trate as well as anything just how compet.i.tive I am.

But there also can be a downside to that compet.i.tiveness.

This retreat included adult men as well as students and offered a tug-of-war, wood chopping, and a number of other events. I'm guessing the church didn't even bother to try and get insurance to cover anybody or the church for that weekend-what insurance company would want to underwrite such events? Anyway, at the end of the night on Sat.u.r.day, they had scheduled an arm-curl compet.i.tion. As I recall, it was a fifteen-pound curl bar with two ten-pound weights on each end, weighing in at fifty-five pounds. I kept sliding back in the line as guys were taking their turns, because I was hoping to be the last one to go, in order to know the number to beat.

The number of repet.i.tions that guys were doing kept climbing with each new guy. Thirty-five, forty, fifty. I think it was around fifty-five repet.i.tions by the time it reached the guy who was next to last . . . me. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to slide all the way to the end of the line, so I was going to have to put up a number that the guy behind me-the last guy in the compet.i.tion-couldn't beat. Better yet, I figured that I'd put up a number that he wouldn't want to beat-and that way beat him before he even got started.

And so I began curling the bar as fast as I could. Thankfully, form didn't matter, just raising the bar to your chest by whatever means necessary. Arching my back, jumping . . . whatever it took. Forty, fifty, sixty, and now I was the leader. I kept going, straight through one hundred, which seemed like a lot, but I wasn't sure. He was really big-the guy behind me, that is.

At 175, my arms were really hurting, but by 225 reps, the pain was pretty much gone and numbness had set in. May as well keep going, I remember thinking. I couldn't feel anything anyway and still seemed to have the stamina and energy to go on.

I put down the bar after 315 curls.

I won.

If ”winning” had included being able to straighten my arms out afterward, I would've been disqualified. I had to pack that night to leave camp the next day with both arms bent stiff at right angles, and when we arrived at church the next morning, I still couldn't straighten them. My biceps were still almost fully contracted from what I had subjected them to in that contest. By the third day the lactic acid and muscle shock had finally worn off, and I could use my arms again.

By the time I was preparing for my freshman football season at Trinity, my strength began to show itself more clearly on the field as well. When I attended the BMW Camp in Ocala (BMW stands for the last names of former Gator quarterbacks, Kerwin Bell, Shane Matthews, and Danny Wuerffel, who ran the camp), I was named the top quarterback at the camp, even though I was still only an eighth grader competing with high schoolers.