The real reason Quinn Cozens quit high school football

Quinn Cozens once harbored big dreams of turning his passion for football into a career. And he sought to be a standout athlete.

Quinn spent the summer of 2016 working his ass off. He attended every voluntary conditioning workout, only missed one week of minicamp because he took a family vacation, worked out, and ran daily. Even on days he had practice.

When August 2016 rolled around and two-a-days started, Quinn knew he did enough to fit in with the varsity group for his sophomore season. Freshman year in 2015 was a learning experience. It told him what he needed to make the jump in his sophomore year.

Only, the head coach put Quinn in the “gray” JV group. Along with the freshmen, a couple seniors, a few juniors, and most sophomores. Wow. Clumped with the JVs without a single drill in actual pads.

Then came the afternoon practice later that week when coaches assigned Quinn to the JV scout team. At that point, he stopped caring. All that fucking work just to line up at defensive tackle of all positions? One he was ill-equipped for? The center and guard, predictably, drove him into the ground on each play.

At the time, it was the most embarrassing moment of his life.

Quinn Cozens had a natural talent and the coaches ignored it

Quinn was a naturally-gifted pass-rush specialist. Yet the coaches never bothered to put him there. After the defensive tackle fiasco, they put him at inside linebacker, where he kept faltering.

In August 2016, he tried quitting the team outright. But the coach, for some strange reason, convinced him to stick around. Quinn’s play never improved until over halfway through the season, when the staff finally put him at outside linebacker and he excelled.

Once, an opposing fullback mauled him and the entire defense broke down. Quinn, his wrist throbbing, purple, and swelling after he took that nasty hit off the fullback’s facemask, chased the running back down and made an open-field, touchdown-saving tackle.

He performed well enough to at least get reps with the varsity scout team at the same position, constantly outmaneuvering the offensive line and getting into the backfield. When practicing with the JVs, Quinn played so well that it pissed off a few teammates.

Still, he never got his chance with the varsity team. It confirmed to him what he’d known for years: Politics dominated his public school, and he wasn’t in the good ol’ boys club.

Turning his attention to physical fitness

Quinn told the system to go fuck itself not long after his failed bid to land a role on the varsity team as a sophomore. Would he have gotten there during his junior season? He wasn’t taking that chance.

Not when he gained muscle easier than his peers and found more fulfilment in weight training. Still, he led his coaches on, determined to get the last laugh. He’d ultimately no-show practice when his junior year rolled around and he made them chase him.

Chase him they did. The head coach called Quinn in the summer of 2017, but he hung up. That should’ve told the coach what Quinn thought of him. Then, he took the long way to the gym, driving by the practice field in his Chevy S-10, flexing his bicep, yelling an obscenity, and speeding off toward town.

Hope they’re having fun, he thought. I’ll be pumping iron and building muscle.

Quinn built muscle for show in 2017. But years later, in 2030, he needed every bit of that physical fitness he built to survive the events in Beyond the Lost Horizon. And he didn’t know how physically fit he was until a group of terrorists put him and his sidekick, Yui Kikuchi, into a survive or die situation.

How does he fare? Find out now.