TreShaun Clark: Making My Own Path
9/13/2022 1:58:37 PM | Football
(Feature Story for the Flames Illustrated football game day program on September 10, 2022)
Everything happens for a reason.
I 100% believe that.
But finding that reason can be quite the challenge sometimes.
I experienced that first-hand in my senior year of high school.
I don't really remember much from that day, and honestly, I'm not sure I want to.
It was the spring game of my senior year.
I was going to make a sack on the quarterback, and I went to tomahawk the ball. But as I was making the play, my teammate was coming for the sack as well off a blitz, and my hand got caught between his helmet and the quarterback's helmet.
I just remember pulling back and suddenly feeling my hand go completely numb. It wasn't until I looked down and noticed the blood that I knew something was wrong.
What to do next?
I've never had any type of traumatic injury before, and that one sort of took me back a bit. When I looked down, I realized I pulled part of my finger off.
Everything was just a blur after that.
One moment, I was on the field playing the game I loved, and the next moment, I was in a hospital room, thinking about my future.
In the days and weeks after, I had to rethink whether or not I really wanted to continue playing football. Life gives you different paths to walk, but ultimately, you have to choose which one to take.
That's something my mom instilled in me since day one.
As a parent, she never wanted to make any decisions for me. She wanted to let me grow up and choose my own path.
I just remember her saying, "It doesn't matter what decision you make, as long as you talk to God and you know that it's the right decision for you—made out of good thought and a good mindset."
That entire conversation broke me down a little bit because she gave me the opportunity to quit if I wanted to, and I'd never really had that. I'd always felt like I had to do it—that I had to keep going for somebody or something, you know?
So being told that I had that support no matter what decision I made forced me to have that conversation with myself and God.
Like, is this where I'm supposed to be?
If I quit, will this be the wrong thing for me?
That conversation helped me figure things out.
God wants me to be here, and I'm supposed to be here.
Everything has played out for a reason.
That reason pushed me to return to the field and eventually earn an opportunity to live out my dream as a college football player at Liberty University.
No crutch needed
And my mom saw all of it.
She's been telling me from the very beginning, "I see this for you." So she obviously broke down in tears when seeing me come back and accomplish my goals after everything I'd been through.
After all of it, I just focus on living my life like nothing ever happened to me.
I don't use my accident as a handicap or something that holds me back.
Because it hasn't held me back.
It hasn't stopped me, and it NEVER will.
I try to use it as motivation to keep going.
I'm proud of myself because I could have gone down a totally different path.
And I almost did.
It's not that I'm embarrassed about what happened, but at the same time, there are moments when I don't want people to know. There are times when I don't say anything.
Some of my teammates still don't even know.
It's something that I don't like talking about, and more importantly, it's something I don't feel like needs to be talked about because I'm still the same athlete.
Actually, a better athlete.
When no one's looking
One thing that helped me was my dad motivating me to work outside of the field first. It's the little things you do when no one else is watching that make the biggest impact.
Regardless of whether it's in life or football, that extra work is how you find success.
It's how I came back.
My hope is to be the best player, teammate, and leader I can be on and off the field. But overall, I just want to strive to be a better human being and encourage others to do the same.
I hope to use my platform for more than just football.
It’s one of the reasons I've joined the #CreatedEqually initiative in an effort to bring awareness to inequalities and help make positive social changes.
I was afraid to do it at first, honestly.
But I almost felt like some sort of responsibility, you know?
I have to use my platform and the respect I’ve earned for the greater good.
Just hearing people tell me how proud and thankful they are for me doing this means the world to me. It's always moving just to get that love and support.
That just reinforces in my mind that I’m doing the right thing.
No limits
In general, taking on more of a leadership role has become very important to me.
Along with the work with #CreatedEqually, I've also joined Coach Freeze's Culture Council, which is basically a group of players that meet in an open forum setting to talk about many of the same issues.
Coach Freeze talks to us about being watchmen for our brothers and sisters. We just want to take that initiative to help somebody move forward or really motivate somebody to change for the better.
It's all about leading by example on and off the field. We want to take that extra step for each other and help show one another how to do things the right way.
And I've been very intentional about it all — being a better leader is a big mission of mine for this year.
I feel like I earned a lot of people's trust and respect, and they listen to me. And I take pride in that. Through the Culture Council and the #CreatedEqually initiatives, I want to leverage that in the most positive way possible.
Here at Liberty, I feel like we've built a brotherhood where we all truly want the best for one another.
It's been beautiful to see how everyone, including myself, takes the constructive criticism.
That's the one thing that separates us: We have each other's backs on and off the field.
And as long as that remains the case, the sky is the limit.
