Telegraph Ave: Oakland High

Chapter 6: Over the Obstacles

Last night before I went to bed, I received a text on Twitter. The text read that from now on until our first football game, we would be lifting weights in the morning, and we would do practice during our Varsity period.

Workouts were going to start at 6:00 am, so I knew I had to get sleep soon. So I went to bed around 9 o'clock, giving me 8 hours of sleep before we had to get going. But Markus, Jordan, and I made it up here on time. Now we're lifting weights with the rest of our team.

I'm under the bar about to lift 275lbs. I took in a deep breath, and I exhaled lifting the weight. I got to the 6 reps, so I slowly count them out.

I let the music flow through my ears, giving me more concentration as I'm lifting the weight. Before I knew it I was finished with my hybrid set, so I got up and went straight to the next workout.

It's been 40 minutes, and the whole team sweating bullets from everybody putting in hard work. Nobody in the weight room slacked off, we did every last rep as instructed. Not because our coaches want us to do it, but because we all want to be better players on the field.

It's about 96 players on this team, and every last one of them will play this season. I can already see our team being the most dominant in the state....it just took hard work as everything else did. But it's all going to be worth it in the end.

5 more minutes passed by, I'm now we're on the ground doing crunches, to getting our abs into greater shape. We had to 5 sets of 30 reps, and we're knocking them out.

When we were finished with our coach blew his whistle.

So we all stopped doing what we were doing, and we huddled around the head coach. I looked at the clock on the wall, and it was 6:55 am. Just one more hour until school starts.

"All right guys great work out, damn great workout. This is y'all second day of school I know. I could've told y'all that we could start this next week , but I didn't do so, because we need to get used to transitioning into new situations. And from what I saw this morning....y'all did just that. So give y'all selves a hand" Our head coach said, as we all started to clap. "So make sure y'all rack up and hit the showers before y'all go to y'all classes now. Y'all are dismissed."

We all put our hand up, and Jordan was going to break it down. "All right, all right, OHS on three, OHS on me! 1, 2, 3!"

"OHS!!!" We all shouted.

*  *  *

It's 7:25 am, and we made it to our homeroom class. Miss. Carter was already here at 6:00 o'clock, so when we came into the building, she allowed us to rest before school started.

Markus and Jordan were knocked out on their desks, and I was the only one awake besides Miss Carter.

"What they had y'all doing this morning." Miss Carter was looking over at us three.

"Oh, the usual....they were killing us with the weight workout." I responded while I just laid my head down.

"And y'all still have practice?" Miss Carter asked me.

"Yes, ma'am," I responded.

"Ha, ain't no way in the world, and this y'all second day of school. I have to be built to do something like that." She responded

"You really just have to discipline yourself, and ask yourself how bad you want it." I responded to her;

She shook her head agreeing to what I was saying.

"Yo!"

Miss Carter and I looked at the door, and we saw the rest of the girls made it.

"Aye, how long y'all been up here?" Tiffany asked me.