by Angel Ruelas, Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, CA
Playing sports has always been my identity. I remember running home from elementary school, just so I could get ready for my little league baseball games. I played all sports, from baseball, football, soccer, wrestling to even being on a swim team called Soledad Sharks. I just enjoyed wearing all of the uniforms and feeling like I was a part of something that was much bigger than me alone.
I recall when playing football back then that I would put on my cleats and a rush of excitement would start to flood through me, because I knew that I would be performing in front of a large crowd of people that did not even know who I was. It only mattered that all of us kids were doing something positive with ourselves and competing to bring out the best in each other. The crowd would go wild whether I made a touchdown, or even missed a tackle. It didn’t matter, we were all winners.
Going to practice when I played sports was just as exciting for me as it was to be playing in an actual game. I looked at every aspect of sports as a preparation to bring out the best of my ability in whatever sport it was that I was playing at the time, and today I understand why my parents wanted me to be involved in sports. Life is much like sports when you are having to prepare yourself for challenges and whatever obstacles you may need to overcome. I think kids today should have that concept instilled into them from their coaches and parents early on in their lives.
Where I lived and grew up getting into sports was all about competing and becoming the best at it no matter what it was: riding skateboards, playing basketball, football, soccer and even playing marbles. It was just what we did as kids and I miss those days every time I see any kind of sports being televised on the television set while sitting here in my prison cell.
There were gangs and drugs where I was raised, but I can honestly say that playing sports kept me from all of that. In my mind I had everything planned out with what I wanted to do with myself; neither gangs nor drugs were going to get in the way of that.
I used to tell myself and everyone around me that I was not going to get stuck in the small town that I lived in, and eventually would join the military to serve my country. Being in the Service was something that I had been dreaming of since I was just a small boy, and I was fascinated with helicopters, rivers and being full of mud up to my knees like the old 1980’s Rambo movies with Sylvester Stallone tromping through the creek beds.
When my wrestling coach in high school told me that I had a good shot at getting a scholarship, I knew that I had to focus on that one sports alone if I was going to achieve that goal. I made it all the way to my senior year ranked at #1 in the state of California and eventually was recruited by West Point Military Academy. The only thing I needed to do was finish the final year as a senior in high school and my dreams would be coming true.
So when my coach finally called me to his office towards the end of my senior year, I thought he was going to give me the keys to my future and everything was going to be smooth sailing from then on. I was definitely wrong.
That day he told me that I was off the wrestling team. I was done. Everything that I had been working on was finished, as far as wrestling for the school was concerned, and my scholarship to West Point, everything was pulled. My grades had slipped that year and eventually came crashing down on me until I had finally quit my senior year altogether. I was ashamed. I had become a high school drop-out and my future was ruined.
I began to spiral downward faster than you can imagine. From letting my parents down on a constant basis, to getting involved with drugs and gangs in my community that I had avoided for so much of my life. My new identity would take a drastic shift as I too started becoming one of them people in my own neighborhood that did absolutely nothing good with their life.
Partying and committing crimes all over California was the only thing that I began to care about. If I was not going to be the best athlete, in my mind, I was going to be the best criminal and gang member I could be. Sadly, that frame of thought filled my actions from then on, until I would commit the crime that landed me here in prison serving life without the possibility of parole.
It did not just happen overnight. I want you to understand that right away; the choices that I began making early on for myself are what piled up one on the other, until I made that ultimate one I could not take back. I took the life of another human being when I was eighteen years of age, and I have been incarcerated for it now going on twenty-two years.
I could sit here and tell you that I was under the influence of drugs, depressed, and had already contemplated suicide more than once at that time of my life, but the truth is I would be avoiding responsibility for all the poor choices that led me to that point in my life and that is not the man I am now.
The moral of this story, my story is that I did not ask for help when I needed it. I had parents that loved me, a coach that saw a winner in me, and other people in my life that were willing to help me when I stumbled. However, I ignored them and took them all for granted thinking that I had everything all figured out for myself. You are no different than I was at your age. “For every young boy or girl that reads my story it all starts with the small steps that you’re going to take in your life.”
Stealing a bicycle, ditching school, throwing rocks at passing cars on the highway, and lying to your parents when you do something that you know they are not going to approve of; these are the small things that will eventually lead you into ramming right into that brick wall and possibly wrecking every dream that you ever had of being who you deserve to be. Be smart and follow your dream, but at the same time take into account everything else that you are doing in order to get that dream because all those things count just as much.