Randy Dickson: Rewards of football are worth the aches and pains

My best friend Ken Hardy and his wife Helen recently made the drive from Fairhope, Ala., to Fort Walton Beach to spend an afternoon with me.

How times have changed now that I’m 50, and Ken’s 50th is just a few weeks away.

Some of you longtime football fans might remember Ken Hardy as a running back/linebacker extraordinaire at Gulf Breeze from 1972-1975.

Some might remember him as a linebacker/defensive end at Auburn from 1976-79.

(I more or less was a tackling dummy for Ken and the starters during my two seasons on the Dolphin squad).

Ken and I shared different talent levels and amounts of playing time, but we both shared the bumps and busted bones associated with football.

Ken never seemed to suffer a major injury in high school, but there was a long line of calcium deposits in his thighs, tweaked shoulders and other things that happen when a star plays iron-man football.

Ken’s injuries mounted in college. A car accident a few years back didn’t help his already battered body.

Like Ken, I learned to play through pain, so I can only assume a shoulder surgery I had a couple of years after high school and my two neck surgeries five years ago were related to my days as a human sacrifice for the blue and gold.

During that recent visit, Ken needed the heating pad for his neck as I tended to my battered neck with an ice pack.

The irony of the price we paid for our games wasn’t lost on either of us.

Most football players don’t think about the possibility of injury, even when day-to-day pain is a constant part of the game. Even after suffering that first injury, most athletes are able to convince themselves that it won’t happen to them again.

If you ask most of us battered old warhorses who have been under the knife if we would do it again, I’m sure an overwhelming majority would answer in the affirmative.

For all the risks associated with football, or any other sport, there are so many more rewards.

The two years I “played” football — or better said, was a member of the football team — are two of the most special years of my life.

I experienced the joy of being a part of a team. Making that experience even more special was the opportunity to be on Gulf Breeze’s first winning football team in 1974, the school’s fifth year.

I learned to push myself both mentally and physically beyond the limits. Football gave me a confidence that I might not have otherwise had.

And football gave me a lifetime of stories I can share in print or as I visit with friends like Ken as we recall those long ago days of youth … heating pad, ice pack and all.