Everything went quiet. The crowd was hushed and the rain slowed to almost non existence. The only thing that he could hear was the seemingly slow pounding of his heart. The mud below his feet seemed to crawl around his cleats as the rain continued to fall. The yell of his coach was slurred and almost inaudible.
He looked to the football just a few feet in front of him and past that, to goal that seemed so small and so far away. The hush of the crowd was deafening. It seemed as though he was looking at the field from the wrong end of a telescope. The scene was something out of a movie.
The cheerleaders were moving in slow organized synchronization. Their ponytails floating behind their heads. He looked up to the stands behind them, standing with a huge smile on her face was his mother, then he looked to the empty seat next to her. His father had failed to show up, he never did approve of his playing football.
His father had always wanted him to be lawyer, but god knows, he never had the grades or the ambition for that. All he ever wanted to do was play football. He remembered the first time that his uncle had thrown one to him at a family Christmas party.
The wiz of the air past his head as he ducked past the ball. The laughter from the throat of one of his cousins, the disapproving look on his fathers face. His father had always said that there was no time for games, that he had to focus on his grades and that he needed to study if he wanted to get into a good college. But he didn't want that, he never did.
In all of the films that he saw, fathers were the ones in the stands cheering on their sons at this point in the game. The ones who were always helping them with their football scholarships. Everything that he wished that his father was or would become, had never come true. All he had wanted from him, all he ever wanted his father to do was smile at him and pat him on the back and say "good job, son, I always knew that you could do it, even if its not what I want for you." . He just wanted one word of encouragement. One little seemingly insignificant word that would next to nothing to anyone else.
He looked over to the bench where the rest of his team was leaning forward with anticipation. Then he saw the scout, the one that was here just for him, just to see if he was college football material, no one else on the team, just him. He wished that were his father. The one who had practically cut him out of his life, spending all of his free time with his colleagues, discussing whatever the hell it was that they did.
He looked to the other side of the field, the scowling faces of the other team glaring back at him. He turned back to face the goal. He ran, the ball seemed to get further away with every step that he took until it was suddenly right beneath his feet. The sound of his foot colliding the ball echoed through the field. Every person in the stands was on their feet in an instant.
He stood. Watching the single thing carried his future. It going so slow that it seemed it wouldn't even make it to the end zone, that it would just fall out of the sky right then and there.