A Lost Friend

My 8th grade year when I started playing football I met my good friend Chad Barcia. Chad was a 6'3", 315lb. guy, that was very caring. We became great friends throughout our high school career. We were both passionate about football and had lots of similarities such as food and trucks. Every year we grew closer and closer. We would do everything together. We were almost inseparable. Every Sunday after our practice (that we always had the morning after a game) we would go to his grandma's Po-boy shop and eat. Our junior year came and we had a great football season. We made it to the playoffs and we both made the all district team. He also made the all state team. Once football season was over I started to play on the rugby team. This was an awesome sport if you love the fiscal aspect of football. My friends and I tryed to get Chad to come out and play with us just for one game because we knew that he would love it but he couldn't because his parents didn't want him getting hurt and messing up his scholarship chances to a big school. So finally one weekend his patents went out of town on a vacation and we convinced him to come out and play with us. It was already march and we only had 2 more games before the state playoffs. So he came out and played and was loving it. We were beating the other team by 40 points at half time. Once half time came we tryed to get him to just sit down for the rest of the game and relax and let some other people play. This only lasted a few minutes. We finally let him back in and he got the ball and was attempting to run it in for a score. No one wanted to try and tackle him because he was so big a strong. Someone finally tryed but only made him drop the ball. So we started to joke around with him about dropping the ball when all of a sudden he just stoped and got really quiet and collapsed right in front of me. We all tryed to help him as he started to shack and scream uncontrollably. I will never forget those screams, they still haunt my dreams today. We called 911 and they came to bring him to the hospital. We all rushed there to be with him and make sure he was OK. They made us wait for a long time and finally brought the hole team in a room and told us that our friend had just died. No one wanted to believe it until they let us go see him for the last time. It was later found out that he could of died at anytime from a heart problem that he was born with and knew nothing about. We all lost it. It only took 20 minutes before the hole city of New Orleans knew about it. As we walked out side for some fresh air there was 300 people there in the parking lot all for Chad. See he was very loved by everyone. This will probably be one of the hardest times in my life that I every had to go through. The lose of a close friend is something that you can never fully get over. I still get chill's and cry every time I talk about it. Chad Barcia will always be one of my closest friends and I believe that he is and always will be with me. Everyone that knows me, knows that I will never let anyone forget the memory of Chad Barcia. I keep reminders everywhere, such as my bracelet(which says #66 Chad In Our Hearts Forever), a picture of Chad in my room, a licence plate that is on the front of my car, and the one that will never be lost is the tattoo that I got on my back last year which is a cross on my left shoulder which says C.B. 66. I placed it on my left side because he always played on my left side on the football field.