Everyone Loves Touchdowns

By: Jayden Maiava

 

It’s hard to put into words what throwing a touchdown in the Coliseum feels like. I can hear the crowd roaring. I can feel an insane adrenaline rush. Running over and celebrating with my teammates - it’s just magical. Shoot, everyone loves touchdowns. 

I can’t specify the feeling, but it makes me just want to keep doing it. I want to immediately go back and throw another one, and another one, and another one. 

After the roar, after the celebration, as soon as I step off the field and sit down on the bench, I’m back to my neutral mindset and energy. I tap back into my ‘next play’ mentality. I focus on staying present on what my coaches are telling me, what the calls are, what I need to do. 

It’s taken a lot of work, a lot of late nights, on the field, and off of it to get to where I am today.

It’s hard to imagine my five-year-old self just starting out in the game. Both of my parents were athletes. My mom played basketball, volleyball and softball. My pops played basketball, volleyball and football, so he really just passed down a love of football to me.

I grew up in a big family. I have five brothers, three sisters. We grew up in a three-bedroom house in Hawaii, and there were up to 20 people living there at any point. I couldn’t ask for a better family. 

Growing up I spent a lot of time with family and built a great relationship with my siblings, with my cousins and my aunties and uncles. My parents did a great job of keeping my and my siblings around our family and that’s one of the things I’m most grateful for is that time and those relationships.

Knowing where I come from, knowing how many people are back home watching me, looking up to me - I take it very seriously in everything that I do. 

My five-year-old self would never be able to imagine doing the things that I’m doing now. He would be so happy and so proud of what we’ve accomplished. 

I take it very seriously to show my family, especially my younger siblings, that they can achieve their dreams, too. To show anyone within the Polynesian community - if I can do it, they can, too. My family, my culture, are incredibly important to me. It’s who I am. It means the world to me that I get to go out there and showcase my culture, my ethnicity and the Polynesian community. 

It’s part of my routine, part of how I set my mindset and get ready for game day. 

I’m grateful for my family, and their support. I stay present in the moment, being where my feet are. I focus on maintaining a neutral mindset. I thank the Lord for the opportunity to go out and play a sport that I love and I make the most of it.

Embracing a neutral mindset has been critical to my development as a quarterback. I’m staying present, being situationally-aware and level-headed. 

It’s no secret that being a quarterback at USC means maintaining a certain standard. The great Trojans who have come before me have done incredible things. They’ve set the standard. They are the legacy. But those are the shoes that I want to fill. 

By embracing a neutral mindset, I can see the legacy of Trojan greatness and not be overwhelmed. I can prepare for the moment. I can understand the task at hand and stay focused. I am continually grateful for the opportunity that I have. I’m constantly thinking about and working on what I can do to be a better person, better quarterback, better teammate. 

Some of it is having deeper conversations with the Man Above. Some of it is reading books about high-caliber athletes, high-performers and taking bits and pieces from their experiences to prepare for my own. Some of it is hours spent in meeting rooms, the weight room, on the practice field, with my coaches and my teammates and trusting in the work that we’ve put in together.

The Trojan legacy, the touchdowns, all that comes with taking care of the things that I can control. The game day mindset is all about winning. For me, that means, in part, maintaining neutrality despite the ups and downs that come in football and in life. It’s about performing at an elite level, executing the game plan.

When I step onto the field, I’m doing it to show the little five-year-old I used to be that we’re here for a reason and we’re chasing our dreams. To show every other five-year-old out there who looks just like me, or grew up just like me that yes, you can achieve your dreams. I’m doing it for that roar, that rush. I mean, shoot, everyone loves touchdowns.