High School Football Player’s Fired-Up Post-Game Speech Goes Viral
Texas high school football player's inspirational post-game speech goes viral.
— -- If football doesn’t end up working out, high school wide receiver Apollos Hester could make a killing as a motivational speaker.
Hester, a senior, plays for the East View Patriots in Georgetown, Texas, and he was a little fired up after his team’s big 42-41 comeback win against Vandegrift High School.
His response to Austin Time Warner Cable sports reporter Lauren Mickler’s one question is now going wildly viral, and for all the right reasons.
“What were you guys able to do to come back and win this thing?” Mickler asked.
“Well, at first we started slow, we started real slow, and you know, that's all right, that's OK, because sometimes in life, you're going to start slow,” Hester began, standing proudly underneath the Friday night lights. “That's OK. 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.”
But his animated and overwhelmingly inspirational speech was far from over.
“Yeah, they had us the first half, I'm not going to lie, they had us,” he continued. “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 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 for 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 go out with this win.' And we believed that, we truly did. And it's an awesome feeling.”
Hester’s energy is certainly contagious. The YouTube video of the interview has been viewed more than 850,000 times, even sparking a hashtag on Twitter, #StartSlowFinishFast.
“A little Monday morning inspiration for you... it's all about attitude!” one tweeter wrote.
“Apollos Hester, greatest interview of all time #StartSlowFinishFast,” added another.
Mickler called it “the interview of the year” as she posted the link to Twitter, before the video had gone viral.
No word yet if Hester will be speaking at his high school graduation, but it’s safe the say all his new found fans are voting yes.
