Personal Statement
Living in foster care for eleven years and switching between fifteen different homes shaped me into the person I am today. I would not be in the position to go to college if it wasn’t for family, football, and the difficult decisions I had to make at a young age. One of those decisions was when I chose to allow my parents to adopt me when I was eleven. Being in the foster care system made me mature a lot faster in certain areas than other kids because I didn’t have what my peers had. I had to work harder for everything I achieved since day one. All the adversity I have had to deal with has only shaped me to be the young man I am right now and brought me to where I am today. The family I was with before I was adopted didn’t allow me to play football because they were Jewish and the practices were usually on Fridays and that was the day we went to synagogue. Everything I have had to endure in those eleven years has not only matured me but it has given me a hunger to succeed not only for myself but also for everyone who has helped me along the way. I know what it feels like to be at the bottom. I realize the opportunities that I have in front of me and I am working very hard to become the first person in my biological family to graduate college. Most kids who have gone through the same things I have, don’t get a chance to go to college, most of them don’t get a chance to play collegiate sports and a lot of them don’t have anyone in their corner to offer help. I am blessed enough to have all of this and I plan on using them to make my goals a reality. I am fortunate to have been adopted by a family that loves and cares about me and wants to see me succeed. I want to use football as a tool to get into college and get a good paying job, that way when I have kids they wont have to go through what I had to go through. Football means the world to me because it has always been the one thing I had in common with my peers. Most of my peers cannot relate to my life, but they can relate to football and that’s why I began to love the sport. Ever since I was young I gravitated towards football over every other sport. As much as I love football, family is the most important thing to me because without my family I would not be playing football and I also wouldn’t have the chance to go to college and continue my education. College football and education are just the stepping stones for me to get to where I want to be one day, and my family is here to help guide me along the journey to get there.
