You would think the most memorable moment for any student athlete or “Jock” would be the very first time running through your locker-room to the Stadium or arena you play in. I’m a Tiger football Alumnus, and my most memorable moment is beating #1 ranked Florida in 1997. It was Saturday night in Tiger Stadium! If that doesn’t sent chills thru your body, close this book you Gator fan.

 

Gerry DiNardo had just given the pre-game speech of his life. As we funneled out of the locker room towards the stadium, you could feel the tension, the anxiety, just the raw emotion in the air. Every last one of us had enormously dilated pupils. I looked around and seen these big black extremely uneasy but confident eyes. I could look into my teammate’s eyes and read their minds; each and every one of them said “I’ll die on this field tonight before I let my brothers down.” My best friend from high school and still to this day Johnny Mitchell was like a cage Tiger. Tears rolling down his face, HE WAS READY! Coach D touched the “WIN” stick on top of the doorway to enter Tiger Stadium. He pushed the doors open, acute tunnel vision came over me, and couldn’t even hear the 90,000 best damn fans in the land.

 

If you have seen the movie Gladiator, that could give you a since of what it’s like to walk out into uncertain battle. I was a part of the “Chinese bandits” that completely threw The Gators off balance. After four quarters of battle it was so surreal, I still feel like it was an out of body experience. I remember the Wild and Crazy student section blowing through security as if they were toy soldiers. They climbed a field goal massaged with Vaseline so that they couldn’t climb the thing, but they climbed the thing. In the mist of this dreamlike moment I was tackled by one of our fans and I watched my helmet role away. It was like I couldn’t get up to get it, all I could do was stare at this student sprint pass and grab it and run. Out of nowhere Coach Haywood ran the kid down and pried the helmet from his hands, and picked me up off of the field, because I was still laying there for some reason. As I got up off the field, here comes the goal post almost exactly where I was lying. As I stood there like a General in the middle of a war zone with out a care in the world. I noticed our Wild and Crazy students trying to carry the goal post to the top of the stadium. WHAT! “That’s dangerous isn’t it?”, I said to myself, but couldn’t move to do anything about it. The coaches had to come out a gather all the players. I think for that moment, we all knew once we went through those locker room doors, it all was going to end.

 

I coached football for a couple years after that, as Strength and conditioning GA for Coach Moffit at LSU, and the offensive GA for Gerry DiNardo at Indiana. I have traveled the world doing all types of high speed, high flying, classified, AIRBORNE, and Special Operation missions with the US Air Force. Now I’m an Aerospace Space Suit Engineer at Johnson Space Center, Houston. To this day I still have not had that feeling of TEAM I had that night.

–Theo M. Williams III, ‘00