Seth Hedman

Reflecting on a 16 Year Football Career: Freshman Year (Part III) Off to a Rough Start Year One: RedShirted After I knew that Drake was where God wanted me to be, I didn't know much else.  I knew that I would redshirt, meaning I wouldn't play for my first year, and I would have to start over again at the bottom of the totem pole.  That meant be humble and patient, but hungry.  I knew that I was the fourth linebacker in my class, and the other three were the guys they signed instead of me.  That meant I had a chip on my shoulder.  I knew that God had brought me here to play football at a high level, so I had a lot of confidence. But things started slow.  And crappy. My first ever  padded collegiate practice, in my first  ever  drill, I messed up my shoulder.  I got hit at a weird angle and it immediately started hurting.  But I toughed it out and kept going.  Well then it got hit a few more times.  Then I stepped in...

Football is Fun My first memory of football is hanging out next to my brother's practices, a field tucked deep into the fall pine forests of Derry, New Hampshire.  It was right by a little round-a-bout with a baseball card store.  If you ventured far enough out into the woods away from the field, you would come upon a quiet lake. But you could never actually see it.  Whenever you would get just close enough to smell and hear the water, it would get drowned out by the yells from mom to come back.  I got a lot of poison ivy in those woods, playing catch with a green and yellow Brett Favre football I had found one day.  The dead pine needles that blanketed the ground during fall gave the whole place a mystical feeling.  It was there, playing for the Youngsville Hawks, between the trees and near the water, that I fell in love with football. At that time I was just finishing being home schooled and I was a year young for my grade but taller than everyone...