Through My Eyes Part 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.

I also had a chance to work out with Gannon Shepherd, my future brother-in-law. At the time, Gannon played for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Katie, an intern for the Jaguars, chose to quit her job and date Gannon, rather than conform to their no-fraternization clause. The first time she brought him home, I was amazed at his size. He was a defensive end at Duke and became an offensive tackle in the pros, backing up the great Tony Boselli. At 6'8" tall and 320 pounds, he was huge. While my parents and the other kids were inside with Katie, I was outside with Gannon, working on pa.s.s rush moves.

Between my success at BMW, my strength victories, and the year as the Trinity JV quarterback that I had under my belt, I went into my freshman year with a lot of confidence. Peter was entering his senior year, and I felt comfortable on the team, with the program, and with our family's history at the school. But then all that changed.

As the season got under way, Coach Verlon Dorminey insisted on moving me from quarterback to linebacker, despite the success I'd had at quarterback in eighth grade. Now to be clear, this was not the first time I'd had to face this concept. I get it. I always did. I understood where they were coming from. I was a big, strong, athletic kid, and I had an advantage over many of the other kids my age because of it. Coaches would therefore always project me to play somewhere else besides quarterback. They all seemed to have a particular body type and lack of athleticism in mind that they a.s.sociated with that of a quarterback and therefore always looked for another position that better fit their stereotype of my body type.

Just because I understood this, however, didn't mean I liked it. I always wanted the ball in my hands. I still do. My very first experience with the "playing position by body stereotype" philosophy and approach to the game was in my first year of playing Pee Wee football at Lakesh.o.r.e. They asked where we'd all like to play, and I, of course, answered, "Quarterback," so they put me at running back.

I didn't get it. And I didn't like it.

And so they played someone else at quarterback and me at running back for one game and then decided to give me a shot and switched us. I was excited for the opportunity and was determined to do everything within my power to demonstrate that they made the right decision. I played there for the rest of the year, and then the following year they moved me back to running back-for the next two years. I hadn't done anything wrong, I was told, but the second year, the coach's son played quarterback.

I lived with that decision for those years in Pee Wee football, but it wasn't very much fun. My family, though disappointed, supported me and the coaches' decision, something that helped especially during those times where I really wanted to get in there and start taking snaps again. I hung with it to be a team player, but I was chomping at the bit to play quarterback. Football was my favorite sport, but what made it fun for me was playing quarterback.

Finally, I got to play quarterback again in my fourth year of Pop Warner, and we made it to the champions.h.i.+p. The next year before the start of the Pee Wee League at Lakesh.o.r.e, my coach came over to the house to talk with my dad. He had some thoughts about where I should be playing.

"I'm thinking of playing Timmy at fullback," Coach said.

"Oh, okay." Dad replied. "I'm thinking about having Timmy play for another team." He was clear and firm. Apparently Coach agreed with Dad that I was the best quarterback on the team, but he, like the others, was always looking for a position that better matched his idea for my body type and athleticism. When Dad told him that I really wasn't interested in playing football at another position, Coach agreed and moved me back to quarterback.

So, here we were again, only this time it wasn't Pee Wee football; it was Coach Dorminey at Trinity, and he didn't want me at fullback; he wanted me at linebacker like my two older brothers. It was merely the latest edition in this long-running soap opera that always had the same dialogue: "Tim wants to play quarterback."

"He's too athletic to be a quarterback."

Position by body stereotype. For that ninth-grade year, though, I stuck with it so I could play with Peter during his final season. It was Peter's time to s.h.i.+ne. But it wasn't much fun. Some guys just have a nose for the ball on defense.

Not me. On defense, I just wanted to hit somebody.

But in all things we can find some good. Even though it was frustrating, I did, even in that latest move.

As I was struggling with the move to defense, I was continuing to work out and get stronger. By that time, too, Robby was in his junior year of football in college, and he started sending me his Carson-Newman College workout books and regimen that the team used. Of course, I always felt that I had to do more repet.i.tions than each exercise called for, and I often added to the suggested workouts with additional running or extra exercises or more sets of those recommended exercises. Taken just as it was from Robby's college, it was a solid workout schedule. For me, it was a great starting point.

In addition to Robby's workout, I learned an exercise series called 10-10-E, which I used thereafter until I got to college. For your final set, you'd put about two-thirds of your maximum weight total on the bar and then do ten reps. After a short break of about a minute, you'd do ten more. Another short break, and then do as many repet.i.tions until complete exhaustion; that is, you can't move it anymore. That number should be between five and eight. If you could do more reps than that, you were supposed to increase the weight for the next time around.

I didn't realize or ever give much thought to the fact that the body needs a rest period to effectively increase muscle, so for those first few years I made sure I worked out every day. My dad tried to tell me to alternate upper-body and lower-body exercises to give my body a rest, but I'm not sure I always heard him. After all, if four workouts a week were good and the number usually recommended, then seven a week would be much better, right? Eventually, I learned a better approach that would help me to get even stronger and more physically fit.

I also studied a number of different books to help with my exercise routines. My best friend since I was little has been Kevin Albers. From the time we moved to Jacksonville from the Philippines I was always hanging out with Kevin, playing with him at Lakesh.o.r.e and being with him in Sunday school. In fact, the Albers's house was one of the few that I was allowed to go to without my parents. His dad, Gary, who trained to be a Navy SEAL, gave me my first book on weight lifting, and I immediately started putting the exercises and principles in that book to use on a daily basis. A number of times when I would go over to hang out with Kevin, Mr. Albers would suggest some new exercise, or some variation on one I was already doing, for me to try. And then there were always the Navy SEAL moments that Kevin and I had with him, which made my time there working out and learning even more fun. He would often say something like, "Grab my shoulder," and the next thing I knew, he'd have thrown me to the floor. He was always teaching Kevin and me various hand-to-hand combat maneuvers that he had learned and polished during his time in the SEAL training.

Along the way I also tried other exercise regimens too. I would add various items from each of these books or from research I was doing on a regular basis on the Internet, but the core exercise protocol remained the one that Robby provided early on, one that he also used, from Carson-Newman College and Mr. Albers's physical-training manual and additional Navy SEAL techniques. I also added exercises from Rocky IV.

In addition to all the training, I'd also been drinking protein shakes in conjunction with my workouts, something that had begun when I was in eighth grade, thanks to homeschool. The reason I had homeschool to thank was that for months I'd been trying desperately to convince my parents to allow me to use the protein shakes, and for months they'd been resisting. That is until my mom suggested that I do a homeschool project to prove to them that the protein mixtures were safe.

My parents' hesitation came from the fact that they didn't want us taking anything that wasn't simply from a natural food supply or some kind of appropriate and generally recognized vitamin. I persisted because I kept hearing about guys mixing protein powder with milk or water and drinking it before or after their workouts. The protein in muscles needs amino acids to regenerate, so I was interested in drinking these shakes high in protein to supplement the protein in my diet that my muscles needed to heal and grow. My goal was to let the science out there persuade my parents that additional supplements of protein in my workouts-protein shakes in particular-were safe for me to use.

All this created a perfect atmosphere for learning-for all of us. Because of my homeschooling, my mom gave all of us the lat.i.tude to study the things that interested us beyond the required course load we had each year. At this time, I was particularly fascinated by whatever might help me improve athletically, and so we turned the building of muscle and protein's role in that into a science project, with an emphasis on any dangers or side effects from supplements and activities that would stimulate or affect the building of muscle. For weeks I did a lot of research in books, magazines, on the Internet, and at the nearby GNC store, putting together what I believed was a well-thought-out and articulated presentation.

After all, my athletic preparation was riding on it. In addition, I figured, why not go ahead and try to win the local middle-school science fair while I was at it? I tested my output of energy through a given workout and how much protein it would take to generate that energy. I even calculated how much protein I could take in through diet alone, and I was able to show that supplementation was necessary to get enough protein.

When I was done with my project, I presented it to my parents. Any grade I might receive was secondary to what I really hoped to achieve with this project and all the research that went into it. It worked. It really was a killer presentation, showing them that the protein shakes from GNC and similar places were completely safe, and I had the science to prove it. From that point forward, I was able to use protein along with my working out.

And yes, I won first place in the science fair.

The protein shakes, though, were just the start. I paid a lot of attention to what went into my body, and around this time I also decided to give up soft drinks for a year. My parents had witnessed over and over how committed I was to taking care of and improving my health, and so on this subject they had decided to challenge me, talking with me about, and demonstrating to me through their own research, concerns about the detrimental effects of ingesting too many carbonated drinks. As an enticement to quit, they offered me one hundred dollars if I went without having one soft drink for a full year. I did it.

I should have held out for more money, but in the end, it was worth it. To this day, I still don't drink soft drinks.

While watching my diet and working out in the right way helped me train, much of my early strength came from working on the farm. Some days it was just for an hour before we'd begin schooling; other days it might be all day, especially if there was a particular project on the farm that needed our immediate attention. We put up fences, chased and herded cows back to where they should be, planted gardens, felled and cleared trees that were dead-or to create some clearings we needed for other things-chopped firewood, and did whatever other work that needed doing on the farm. We joked that we were getting ready to dial Child Services when the work got too tough.

And as if there wasn't enough for us to do on our farm, about six times a year or so, Dad would loan us out to a neighbor friend, Mr. Bell, to help with whatever needed doing in raising and caring for his chickens. If you thought that I was complaining about working on our farm, trust me . . . I wasn't.

Chicken farming was brutal. Mr. Bell had a hundred thousand chickens. Upon arrival each time Dad sent us over, we'd immediately begin putting the new biddies (young hens) into his chicken houses, while also removing any dead biddies and chickens that happened to be in those houses. He had four chicken houses, and it was common for us to easily fill up three good-size buckets with dead chickens from just a single house.

But the fun was just getting started. We would then take the dead biddies to Mr. Bell's composter, where we alternated layers of chicken manure, which we had shoveled up from the chicken houses, and the dead chickens we had also just gathered up from the henhouses. The job-the smell, as the chickens cooked after being mixed in with the fresh chicken manure-would be a shoe-in for that Dirty Jobs television show. It was horrible.

Farmer strong. On so many levels.

On occasion we'd need to empty the composter when it got ripe and ready, which, as you can imagine, could get full fairly quickly on a chicken farm with a hundred thousand chickens. This process happened shovelful by shovelful through a door down at the bottom of the composter, loading the end product of fertilizer into a trailer. We would then drive the trailer to our property and begin scooping it out, throwing and spreading it evenly onto the garden or pasture as someone slowly drove the trailer along.

How many times was the wind blowing-in the wrong direction-as we threw this concoction onto the garden plots? Every time. It never failed that it ended up all over us-in our mouths, on our clothes, and in our eyes, hair, and ears. It probably doesn't have to be said that Mom would never let us in the house when we returned but instead forced us to strip and shower outside.

Looking back, I don't know if it's funnier that we only got five dollars for working all day or that I thought it was worth so much more when I was young.

Funnier still may have been the days when Mr. Bell would drive us to Burger King as an additional treat afterward, and before we'd had our outdoor shower. It must have been painful for other patrons and the Burger King manager and employees-not a treat for them, to be sure.

In the end though, being farmer strong, being trained, taking care of my body-it all felt like it would be futile if I couldn't play quarterback. Despite the fact that I kept improving and had good practices when I was allowed to play at quarterback, the coaches still used a different starting quarterback. That was how my freshman fall at Trinity went, and as the season came to a close, my future as a Trinity quarterback didn't look very bright. I continued to play hard and did what I was told at linebacker and tight end, while my dad kept filming each game every Friday night, dutifully making copies and delivering them to Coach Dorminey. But even with that loyalty, we were all beginning to see that something needed to change.

Between football, homeschooling, and farm labor, that freshman year I kept pretty busy. And when I wasn't doing any of those things, I was busy at our church. My family attends First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, and I was involved in their plays and youth meetings and activities whenever and as much as possible. Every Sunday morning we were all there, and the other times were a bit more sporadic, weaving things in with the pretty regular schedule of sports, which was often easier said than done.

First Baptist always had great kids' musicals, directed by Miss Nancy, who has supported me through my acting and football careers. I would never try out for special parts in the Christmas musicals because of football, but I had some memorable roles in the summer ones. My first role, however, did not exactly portend greatness on stage. I was in second grade and was cast as the back end of the camel. Please, no comments. The next few years, I played some "front end" roles, but I only had action parts, never ones that required speaking. That would come later. In third grade, I was a sailor, a supreme court justice in fourth grade, and in fifth grade, I was chosen to play Superman. It was a fun action part with a great costume, but I had such a dilemma when I realized that the required dress rehearsal was the same time as the semifinals for the city baseball champions.h.i.+p. My mom and I prayed (Dad was in the Philippines), and my team won without me. That meant, however, that the champions.h.i.+p game was the same time as my musical. We prayed again. To their credit, my coaches made an appeal to the city, and the final game was changed to Monday. I learned a lesson about giving the Lord my burdens, and this was a huge burden to me at the time. With no game on Sunday, some of my teammates came to the musical. And we won the city champions.h.i.+p on Monday. My final action part in a children's musical was the first summer after I started college. I returned home to play Goliath and had a ball with all the kids.

With football season behind me, I moved on to the other sports I played for Trinity-basketball and baseball-both of which had rigorous schedules. In basketball, it seemed that my strength helped me to level the playing field a bit, balancing my basketball abilities and performance against my young age. When we played against Hawthorne High, just outside of Gainesville, I faced Cornelius Ingram, even at that time a great football and basketball player who was taller than I was and two years older. He went on to play both sports at the University of Florida. When we played Jacksonville Country Day, their lineup included a seven footer. It was obvious each time out that I needed to find something else that would give me a bit of an advantage-a balance against taller as well as older and more experienced players.

On both of those occasions, I was the one a.s.signed to guard the tall guys. I was able to more or less hold my own due to my strength and by playing physically. It wasn't pretty, however.

Baseball was still in the sports mix as well. In fact, it was probably my best sport and the one that seemed to come to me most naturally-I had played varsity since the seventh grade. We even played some golf on occasion. But we did it on the cheap-it was not one of those sports that at the time fit into a missionary's salary. So Dad let us take the weed whacker out into the pasture and create our own putting greens, and then we used the posthole digger to create the cups. We were able to create four holes on our own farm this way-one of them was even a water hole over the pond-and messed around with playing a few holes whenever we could.

As much as I enjoyed playing sports for Trinity, though, my parents and I were still troubled with the quarterback situation at the school. And so we came to the conclusion that the time had come for us to look for other schools where I could play football. It was disappointing for all of us in the Tebow family. Trinity had always had great talent. More important, I had played with Peter, and our football team was on a run that culminated with our being crowned as state champions-the first time in school history. Peter had a great year and a great experience at Trinity and was named best defensive player for the year, but as a family, we came to a place where we knew we had to figure out a different plan for my future. We weren't going to say a word about our leaving during the season, but once the decision was made, our search began in all seriousness to find the best environment for me to fully develop my pa.s.sion, and what seemed then to be talent, for playing quarterback.

No one in the Tebow family was pleased about reaching the end of the trail they had been running, walking, and filming at Jacksonville Trinity Christian Academy.

It was a disappointment to us all, but somehow we all knew it was the right thing to do.