John Hines
I haven’t always felt the way I do about our football team. When I first came to Maranatha Baptist Bible College, I wasn’t interested in football. I was a naysayer like a lot of the campus. The football team was not all that good—my freshman year they were 2-7. And the next year they were 0-10. But my junior year I went out for the team. In some ways, I’m still not sure why. I didn’t know anything about football, but I just wanted to play a team sport. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t know that the team would go 0-10 again that year. The losing streak totaled 33 games. But my senior year, we changed that.
Rockford College was our opponent for the last game of the season of my senior year. Up to that game, both teams were 0-9. Both teams had struggled against teams that outsized them. Maybe my focus was wrong, but throughout the season, I kept asking God for a win. When Saturday came, it was one of the coldest days of the season. The November wind whipped across the field, chilling everyone to the bone, but most of us were too focused on the game to care. Athletes are always nervous before a game, but this was different. We knew this was it—the game everyone had been waiting for.
I am a second string player. As one of the smaller linemen on the team, I play some special teams and occasionally defensive end. I can get frustrated when I don’t get a lot of playing time. But not against Rockford. I wanted our best players in there the entire time to get the best results. It wasn’t about playing time; it was about the team giving everything.
For most of the game, it felt like neither team could move the ball offensively. Our defense shut them down again and again. Rockford got into our red zone twice but we stopped them both times. We ran a new type of defense, putting a lot of pressure on the quarterback, with a couple sacks, and multiple stops at the line of scrimmage. But our offense could not move the ball much better than Rockford could.
Our quarterback threw the ball beautifully, but our receivers seemed to have wooden hands. Pass after pass, we would hold our breaths, waiting for the ball to land in the receiver’s hands, only for him to drop it or completely miss it.
Neither team scored in the first half, but we didn’t care. We were still alive and came into the second half ferociously. The third quarter was much the same as the first half, with not much happening. But then we did it. We scored at the end of the third quarter with a short pass to our running back, who trucked into the end-zone.
As expected, we were going nuts. I was so excited I almost forgot to run onto the field for the extra point. The touchdown was like nitro for our engine. We knew we could do it. We could beat these guys.
The fourth quarter made the game feel how any football game should feel: nail-biting intense. We forced four interceptions, but also fumbled on our 20-yard line. Our linebacker ran the fourth interception back for a 90 yard touchdown with only a minute left in the game. Somehow, they scored with only seconds left, but it didn’t matter. We won. We did it. Thirty-three games, 3 years, and countless pessimists later, the Maranatha Crusaders had won a game. And I was there.
As the last seconds of the clock ran out, Maranatha players and fans stormed the field. I had never been part of something like this before. I had a crowd screaming their lungs out for my team. Grown men were crying, everyone was hugging and cheering. I wasn’t emotional until our center, a senior like me, grabbed me and started crying on my shoulder. Then I lost it.
As I walked off the windy field to the locker room, I realized my legs were shaky. It truly felt like a dream. I had never won in football, much less be a part of a team that broke the longest current losing streak in the NCAA. Winning that game was one of the best moments of my life.
