My name is Tate Zeller and I graduated from John Marshall High School in Rochester Minnesota in 2023. I’m currently a Freshmen at the University of Dubuque pursuing my degree in Aviation. As I underwent the craziness of high school, I realized that one of my biggest mental struggles in life is the feeling of being alone. I come from a very religious background and had constantly been told that I needed to attend a school affiliated with our church. I was told I’d be out of place anywhere else. Due to many factors, including aviation and football, I inevitably made the choice to go elsewhere. With that pressure to go to my church school, and attending fall camp at UD, I quickly felt very alone. UD Football helped me get through. My favorite aspect about football is how diverse it truly is. No other sport permits a 6’7” 400 lbs. goliath to compete with a 5’10” 165 lbs. speed demon; yet football does just that and more. The two not only play the sport together but they are empowered to grow together as well.
Fall camp was a true struggle for me. Two weeks of literally nothing but football sounded like a dream come true to me, that is until I did it. During those two weeks, my life was truly nothing but football from 7:00 am to 10:30 pm every single day. I was beyond exhausted and struggled watching my friends and family back home “living their best life”. However, I would push on and head to practice throwing on a façade that everything was alright. I would often try to toughen myself up by telling myself “If all my teammates are doing perfectly well, why can’t I?” One day I wandered into the locker room to grab something I had forgotten when something caught my ear. Someone was shedding tears. Those same tears I had shed for my comfortable life back home. Without a second thought I stepped in to comfort my dear teammate, and this is when it hit me: I wasn’t compelled to pass on my church school for my own sake, but for others’. Football creates true men who have the physical strength of a frontline soldier but also the mental strength of one as well. Being bombarded with pressure from coaches and life and still being able to have a brotherhood with everyone on your team and truly be open and honest with them is something beautiful. Football is, and will always be, a cornerstone in my life because of how much it has grown who I am as a person. Being a member of the UD football team helps me realize I can bring joy to people not just on Saturday afternoons, but in all walks of life. For anyone out there afraid of spending so much of their time on sports, I suggest you go for it because you never know how much it will bless your life until you experience it for yourself.
