October has been routinely recognized over the past few years as a time for people to step back from football and think about those who have battled forms of cancer – particularly breast cancer – throughout their lives.

Football players have been sporting pink on their jerseys for years in recognition of loved ones or family friends who have faced this disease. Cancer survivors know what it’s like to battle back in the face of adversity.

On a much smaller scale, football players also have to be resilient and show perseverance at times during a heated battle on the gridiron.

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Bill Williams, U.S. National Team coach and head coach in Holdenville (Oklahoma) High School, has talked to his team a few times this season about getting back up when you get knocked down.

“Life has a way of testing you where nothing happens at all or everything happens at once,” Williams said. “Everybody is good when things are good; that’s life. I found this out coaching over the years that when you go in someplace and you start to turn the culture around – the expectations around – everybody is good when it’s good.

“When you get hit right in the face and when you get knocked flat on your butt, that’s when you find the champions.”

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Williams is a firm believer that champions show up when things get tough, and that can be related to anything in life, not just football. In his mind – especially on a football team – champions don’t point fingers at anyone. They just keep on pounding and ‘rock and roll’ through the tough times.

“These football games are important, but football is a game; an awesome game,” he said. “It’s a game that gives us so much adversity that it builds great men because there’s no other game played in the history of mankind that’s going to put you out there in all the elements.”

The former member of the 2016 International Bowl championship team loves football because not only does it help players grow up before your very eyes throughout competition, it also enables athletes to be able to handle anything the game of life throws at them.

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All the games will come and go for these players, but Williams’ biggest point to his athletes is bigger than the game. It’s about all the lessons they learn in between the lines and how to transition them to everyday life when the going gets tough.

“You’re going to have to motivate your family through hard times, motivate your kids through hard times,” Williams said. “You’re going to have the whole world on your back and you’re going to have to carry people through hard times and be a man.

“The adversity we go through in football; we are going to go through in life. We are going through something right now in Holdenville – we are beat up like I have never been beat up as a coach before. We’ve had three gets get surgery already and we are going through some adversity because we have a lot of young kids out there. It’s tough on me, tough on the coaches, tough on the kids and tough on the town – but you know what – five years from now when we are setting back looking at this, we are going to say, ‘we made it through, man.’”