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By: Chad Wilson – Editor – GridironStuds Blog<\/strong> The pass sailed right over his outstretched hand and landed in the basket of the wide receiver.\u00a0 From my seat across the field,\u00a0 I could not entirely make out what happened but you could see the small section of visiting East Carolina fans in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium celebrating so it couldn’t be good.\u00a0 Quincy Wilson had just been beat for a touchdown for the first time in a college football game in front of thousands.<\/p>\n What should have been disappointment for me was over run by curiosity.\u00a0 How would he react?\u00a0 I have seen many a DB at this early stage in their career either go completely in the tank or be rather average for the rest of the game after that.\u00a0 What occurred after that play was what I still call Quincy’s best game as a Gator.\u00a0 For the next three quarters it was an entire murk session.\u00a0 East Carolina WRs could not get off of the line of scrimmage,\u00a0 get down the field nor catch a quick screen without getting abused by #6.\u00a0 Where fear may have been the dominant feeling for many,\u00a0 competitive fire was being served in the most furious To-Go boxes.\u00a0 Where did this come from?<\/p>\n While I can say that he grew up in a competitive household and played multiple sports growing up,\u00a0 I can definitely track a good amount of that competitive spirit on the Saturday afternoon to competing in 7-on-7.\u00a0 Therein lies the major benefit in the new sport that has captured the months of January – June in high school football.\u00a0 The daily battle rages on Twitter between high school football coaches who hate 7-on-7 and 7-on-7 coaches who would swear by it.<\/p>\n While there is much to make you frown about the 7-on-7 culture like overzealous coaches,\u00a0 players being recruited to play at other high schools and some college football recruiting malfeasance,\u00a0 the competitive nature of 7-on-7 can take a player to a whole new level.\u00a0 High school football is filled with well put together,\u00a0 athletic youngsters who just don’t put it all together.\u00a0 Those who have played this game and been successful at it know that a majority of this game is mental.\u00a0 They also know that the truly elite are that because of their competitive nature.\u00a0 7-on-7 is haven for competition.<\/p>\n Along with the team vs. team competition that gets extremely heated,\u00a0 there is the microscope placed on the 1-on-1 match-ups that occur within the game.\u00a0 Those match-ups are taking place while a jury of your peers stand feet away from them jeering at them before, during and after the play.\u00a0 That jury is the equivalent of a sold out stadium that seats 100,000.\u00a0 What does a teenager care about more than the opinion of another teenager?\u00a0 If you doubt that,\u00a0 ask your child to wear a pair of outdated Skeechers to school tomorrow morning.\u00a0 He’d read Hamlet and write a 5,000 word essay on it before he’d do that.<\/p>\n Playing in front of 80,000 people on a Saturday is a pressure cooker but it pales in comparison to lining up mono y mono vs. a highly recruited athlete from a rival team in a pool play game at a national 7-on-7 tournament.\u00a0 If you don’t believe me ask anyone who’s been through both.\u00a0 The pointing,\u00a0 jeering and antics that ensue after a player has been beaten on a play in 7-on-7 builds mental toughness and character.\u00a0 It’s the equivalent to walking 20 miles to and from school in the snow that the generation before us always talks about.<\/p>\n Last Saturday I watched a young DB get beat for a touchdown at a tournament in Ft. Lauderdale.\u00a0 The opposing team brought out a trash bag and tried to put him in it.\u00a0 The mother in you will feel sorry for the kid and want to give him a hug.\u00a0 The father in you sitting in a crowd of 80,000 people realizes that your son is prepared mentally for anything that is going to happen to him on that field.<\/p>\n 7-on-7, like taxes, is here to stay.\u00a0 Also like taxes,\u00a0 it has it’s benefits though few wish to dwell on them.\u00a0 The smart ones amongst us use taxes to their benefit.\u00a0 I suggest to you that you do the same.\u00a0 The competitive nature and pressure of 7-on-7 is second to none.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Chad Wilson – Editor – GridironStuds Blog Twitter: @gridironstuds The pass sailed right over his outstretched hand<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-high-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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