Since the eighth grade, football was my life. During spring semester of my junior year, I spent 5 days each week training with my team. One day, at a practice meet in March of my junior year, my coach split the team into groups and had us scrimmage against each other. A college football scout had visited that day, which gave everyone an incentive to be more aggressive. When the ball snapped, I found myself in a neck-and-neck battle with a 350-pound offensive lineman, pushing him and trying to get the ball from him. I was giving it my all until I suddenly felt a dull pain in the center of my lower back. Before I realized what was going on, I collapsed to the ground. There was excruciating pain radiating from my lower back to the bottom of my right leg. My mother picked me up from school and took me to the ER, where doctors conducted an MRI scan. It revealed a disk herniation on my lower lumbar spine. The doctor told me that there was major damage to disks L4 and L5, and insisted that my best path to recovery was 4 months of physical therapy. This news was devastating. It disrupted the months I spent training for football, embarrassed me in front of a scout, and it was also going to disrupt every moment of my life for what would be the next 4 months at minimum? I couldn’t walk, sleep, or shower without being in pain. I couldn’t even go to school because I was in too much pain to sit upright in a desk chair. Instead, my mother picked up my assignments from school every week so I could complete them at home. Imagine trying to do work while lying on your stomach. That was my reality for months. As the months went on, my junior year drew to a close and I began to sink into a depression. I felt so useless. I couldn’t do anything for myself or my family; I was a burden for needing the help of everyone around me. I spent so much time feeling sorry for myself, thinking about the way the year should’ve went. My grades were suffering as my absence from class made my assignments progressively harder to complete. The painful and tedious physical therapy sessions were mentally draining. I was gaining weight from my lack of activity. How long would this go on? I was losing motivation and felt miserable all the time. My depression was slowing down my recovery. I had now entered month six of what was supposed to be a four-month physical therapy plan. Tired of feeling sorry for myself, I decided that the injury had taken enough memories from me and I would not allow it to take any more. I faced my recovery with a new attitude: I took it one day at a time, and focused more on my small progressions. I stopped saying, “I can't do this,” and started saying, “I can't do this yet”. Although I had not yet fully recovered, I made progress faster than before, and was even able to walk enough to attend school again in October. I fully recovered the July after my senior year. As of may of 2021 i completed my associate of arts at palm beach state college and plan to transfer to the University Of Miami in the fall to complete my bachelors of arts in criminology to hopefully fulfill my dreams of having a career in law enforcement.

I’m currently in need of this scholarship to pay for tuition.

My greatest inspiration in life is my father Alberto Martinez he’s been my superman since birth. He is the backbone to my family and what I hope to one day be for my own kids. Throughout my twenty years of life my dad has sacrificed his whole life by working in construction to feed me, my sister, and my mother. I didn’t realize how hard he truly worked until one summer he took me to work with him and after working that summer I realized that he is a true soldier. Throughout high school I was a football player in South Florida, and I must say working in that environment was tougher than any football workout I had ever gone through, having to constantly pick up heavy sheets of drywall, inhaling dust, and having to work in warm temperatures without air conditioning while making 13 dollars an hour made me appreciate my superhero dad even more. Every semester I take I make it personal just thinking of what my superhero dad has had to put on his shoulders for the past 20+ years having to work 6 days a week just to barely make ends meet is what drives me whenever I’m struggling with courses. Nowadays I just sit back and try to imagine myself in his shoes being that man who immigrated 25 years ago from Mexico would I have ended up being so determined and hardworking like my father? I may never find out, but one thing is for sure no matter how many degrees I receive or how much money I end up making I will never be half the man that he was and for him I’m forever thankful. After I finish my bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami, I plan to start working so that I’m able to finally get my dad to retire without him having to worry about not having enough money to pay the bills. Everyone has their own inspirations and in my case my father is the biggest inspiration and sense of motivation to me which is why I will do whatever it takes to make sure that I truly make him proud.