Emani's Article "48 Hours to GAME TIME!

Emani wrote this article and it was in the School Paper Today!

As fall break approached, most Cornell students prepared to head home and take a little time away from their schoolwork. Meanwhile, Cornell athletes were flipping the switch and preparing for their upcoming weekend contests. For an athlete, the 48 hours leading up to a game is almost sacred. Some have seemingly odd superstitious routines or rituals that they feel must be followed in order to succeed on game day. Others choose to stay away from superstition as they focus and prepare — everyone has their unique style.

For me, I have no lucky shirt or hat that I always wear on Fridays before games, but I do have my routine. For some reason, every Friday I seem to get this craving for something — it could be a smoothie or a cinnamon pretzel from the mall like it was last Friday, and fulfilling this craving helps to keep me relaxed. My whole goal for the 48 hours is to be as relaxed and inspired as possible. For inspiration, I always watch Youtube highlights of big hits or my favorite players to get me further inspired to make plays on Saturday. Before our first game this year, I went to a local little league practice, and that helped me to relax and remember the game when everything seemed so easy.

When Saturday is here, it’s game day! As a football team we have pre-game breakfast together in the Statler around 9 a.m. From there we go through final meetings with our coaches, and then a last call where captains speak to us about W.I.N. — What’s Important Now. At this time you can really start to feel kickoff drawing closer, as the marching band leads us from the Statler to Schoellkopf. The band plays and parents and alumni line up along the sidewalk as we pass — I always seem to have goosebumps by the time we enter the doors of Schoellkopf.

We are about two hours away from kickoff and before getting dressed for the game I read my Bible, take a walk on the field, stretch and maybe even get in the warm whirlpool to loosen up; it all depends on how I am feeling. Once again though, everyone prepares differently for a game and my teammate, Rashad Campbell, and I always give each other a hard time about this. Rashad is always taking a last-minute look at the game plan, and asking me questions about different things as a way to quiz himself. I always tell him to loosen up, and he laughs and tells me he can’t live life on the edge.

One of the last things I do before every game is put on my eye black. I always wear eye black underneath my eyes, and I always have a message written in the eye black. I took this idea from Tim Tebow, the quarterback at Florida who is known to write Bible verses on his eye black. This past weekend, I wore James 2:22, “…with works, faith is perfected.”

Eye black on. Game time is here. We lock arms and take the field!

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