High school postgame interviews normally range from awful to mediocre. High schoolers haven't had any PR training and are usually either really nervous or completely disinterested with doing an on camera interview.
And then there's Apollos Hester from East View High School in Texas. Hester was REALLY excited about how his team won and let everyone know by giving the best motivational speech ever in his post-game interview.
Apollos Hester's Motivational Speech
"All right, well at first we started slow. We started real slow, and you know that's all right, that's okay, because sometimes in life you're going to start slow. That's okay. We told ourselves hey, we're going to start slow. We're going to keep going fast. We're going to start slow, but we're always, always going to finish fast. No matter what the score was, we're going to finish hard, we're going to finish fast.
"Yeah, they had us the first half. I'm not going to lie. They had us. We weren't defeated, but they had us. But it took guts, it took an attitude. That's all it takes. That's all it takes to be successful, is an attitude, and that's what our coach told us. He said, "Hey, it's going to be tough. It's going to be hard. You're going to go out there, you're going to battle, you're going to fight, you're going to do it one another. Do it for each other. You're going to do it for yourself, you're going to do it for us, and you're going to come out with this win," and we believed that, we truly did.
"It's an awesome feeling. It's an awesome feeling when you truly believe that you're going to be successful regardless of the situation, regardless of the scoreboard, you are going to be successful because you put in all the time, all the effort, all the hard work, and you know that it's going to pay off, and if it doesn't pay off you continue to give God the glory. If you still lose the game you continue to get each other's back, and that's what we realized. Win or lose, we realized that we were going to be all right and it was going to be okay. We're going to keep smiling. It was awesome. Awesome."
"It's a mindset, yes ma'am. Hey, you can do anything you put your mind to. Never give up on your dreams. Keep smiling no matter what you're going through. If you fall down, just get up. If you can't get up your friends are there to help you out. Your mom is there, your dad is there. God's there. Hey, I'm there to help you up. You're there. It's going to be all right. Keep smiling man."
I'm going to go try and run through a wall now because young Hester has me feeling like I can do anything too.
This post was originally published on August 15, 2014, but Apollos Hester's message and positive attitude still gives us chills, especially at a time where the coronavirus and COVID-19 want to break us.
Keep pushing and keep moving forward, together.
