The 8-Year-Old Prodigy: From Football Dreams to Gaming Goals

Join us on this special episode of Shine On Success as we welcome our youngest and most inspiring guest yet, eight-year-old Ezra Alan Cook. Ezra is already making waves both on and off the field with his passion for football and video games. Born on December 17th, this young talent is not only a star on the offensive line but also a formidable gamer, especially with EA Sports College Football 25.

In this heartwarming and motivating episode, Ezra shares his journey from playing flag football in first grade to scoring against top players like Jalen Warren. He talks about his favorite moments in gaming, his dreams of making it to the NFL, and his aspirations to become a Hall of Famer. Ezra's confidence, determination, and zest for life are contagious as he discusses his achievements as a SOAR Student of the Month and his fearless approach to ordering his own food at restaurants.

Get ready to be inspired by Ezra's stories, his love for football, and his dreams of becoming a video game streamer. Whether you're a sports enthusiast, a gaming fan, or someone looking for a dose of positivity, this episode is sure to uplift your spirits and remind you of the boundless potential within us all.

Tune in and let's celebrate the incredible journey of this young prodigy!

Transcript

Young Football Prodigy's Inspiring Journey

Speaker 1 0:02

Before we dive into today's episode , I want to know what was your favorite childhood hobby or sports ? Mine was playing kickball and snowmobiling with my neighbors . Share your memories below and let's see how they compare with our guest's experience . Welcome to Shine on Success podcast . Today we have an extraordinary young guest who is sure to inspire and impress you . At just eight years old , ezra Allen Cook is already making waves on both on and off the field .

Speaker 1 0:25

Eight years old Ezra Allen Cook is already making waves on both on and off the field . Born on December 17th , ezra is a passionate gamer with a special love for EA Sports , college Football 25 . When he's not dominating in video games , he's shining in real life sports , particularly football , where he plays on the offensive line and has even scored against the formidable Jalen Warren . Ezra's talents don't stop there . He's been recognized as a Soar Student of the Month and has been confidently ordering his own food at restaurants since he could talk . Get ready to be inspired by Ezra's enthusiasm , determination and incredible achievements . Let's dive in and learn more about this amazing young talent . Hi Ezra , welcome to the show . Thank you , so excited for you to be here . We've been waiting for a couple of weeks , so you're definitely the youngest person I've ever had on here , at eight years old . So I feel like our episode is going to go viral , because it's interesting interviewing a young man like you . Yeah , so let's get started . So what do you love most about playing EA Sports College ?

Speaker 2 1:16

football . It's fun . I play with friends sometimes . What's so fun about it ? It's like really realistic a lot of times , yeah .

Speaker 1 1:26

Yeah , I didn't even know that , because I've never played that I love football , though I didn't know if you knew that , but I love football .

Speaker 2 1:31

Can you tell me about one ?

Speaker 1 1:32

of your favorite moments or achievements in playing that game .

Speaker 2 1:35

It was probably when I beat my stepdad like 59 to 7 . Oh , that's a big accomplishment .

Speaker 1 1:43

I like that that's a lot 59 points . How do you balance your time ? So I know you go to school and you play video games and you practice football . How ?

Speaker 2 1:53

do you balance all of that ? I just come home from school and then go outside with my neighbors and then just go to football practice . Usually . Do you love football ? Oh yeah , I love it .

Speaker 1 2:04

So I heard something , a rumor , that you had this idea for a new play that you had in mind that you were going to share with your coach . Can you share it with us first ?

Speaker 2 2:11

It was where you fake the handoff to the running back and the running back goes straight and the QB just goes down the middle .

Speaker 1 2:19

Oh , that sounds interesting . Who's your favorite quarterback ? Patrick Mahomes , I mean , I do like him , but I'm still a Big Ben fan because I love Big Ben are you still a fan ?

Speaker 2 2:34

oh yeah , oh good . So what inspired you to start playing football ? When I was in like first grade . There's this one NFL player named Justin Jefferson and he has a celebration named the gritty and everyone would do it in school and I looked it it up once and it was about football and I started playing flag and then a couple months later , I just started playing tackle . Oh so you're an offensive line tackle , yes .

Speaker 1 2:54

So what made you decide on offense versus defense ?

Speaker 2 2:57

Oh no , I didn't decide , it's my coaches . Oh , so they saw some talent in you . Well , they weigh you and if you're over 100 pounds then you have to be on the offensive line .

Speaker 1 3:08

Oh see , that's good . I didn't know that I'm learning some new things from you when you scored against Jalen Warren . That was so impressive , can you tell ?

Speaker 2 3:15

me the story about that . So I went to the Jalen Warren practice and certain people got picked to go against him in a 1v1 . And I guess they just picked like five random people and five people would go against him and it was either you like score on him or you don't . And I scored on him . That's awesome . Were you excited that day ? Oh , yeah . Did you scream ?

Speaker 1 3:36

Oh , no , no no , you're just really excited , uh-huh . If there's any other player in football that you would , he's so good . Yeah , do you like his brothers ?

Speaker 2 3:52

Oh yeah , I've seen TJ Wall in person . You have when At the Steelers practice . Oh man , when did you go there this year ? Yeah , my uncle took me and my mom oh , that's cool Did you have fun .

Speaker 1 4:04

Yeah , in all of Steelers history , who's your favorite player ?

Speaker 2 4:09

I have two . It'd I meant TJ Watt and Antonio Brown . You like Antonio Brown ? Yeah ?

Speaker 1 4:14

Do you remember Santonio Holmes when he did that tackle in the end zone in the Super Bowl ? Nope , I'm going to have to share that with you . That's one of my favorite plays in all the sports .

Speaker 2 4:23

One more thing I want to ask you about football .

Speaker 1 4:24

What do you enjoy most about being part of a team ? Like , what's your favorite part of being in a football ?

Speaker 2 4:29

team . It's great . You get to like meet new people , watch a teamwork and stuff , so you like that . Yeah , that's cool .

Speaker 1 4:35

So I heard another story about you that you were SOAR student of the month . Is that correct ? Yes , what do you think helped you achieve that ? Just being nice to people , so you're nice to everyone . I had it when I saw you a couple of weeks ago . We had a nice conversation that day . It was really cool talking to you . Oh yeah , it was really cool talking to you , oh yeah . What are your favorite subjects in school Gym ? Because you love sports , right ? Yeah , I know that you love to order your own food at restaurants . You've been doing that since you could talk , so that's been a long time . How did you become so ?

Speaker 2 5:03

confident to do that . I don't know . It's easy Because it's just like if you're able to order your food , then it's technically you want to eat right yeah , so that's your mom .

Speaker 1 5:13

Yeah , because if your mom orders for you , she might order something you don't like , right ? Yeah , so you really you're aggressive on that . I like it . Uh , what's your favorite ?

Speaker 2 5:21

food of all , my favorite probably steak . You like steak , what else ?

Speaker 1 5:25

yeah , fries , steak and fries yeah , you're definitely a boy's boy there . Do you have any tips ? So this is important for other kids who might feel shy about ordering food or just coming out and talking about things with their family , like you're very good at that . So can you give some tips for other kids ? I don't have any tips . No tips , like you have to have something in there .

Speaker 2 5:45

Oh , about , like ordering your own food . Yeah , just be confident , I like it , you're very confident , yes .

Speaker 1 5:52

So what are your goals for the future in football ?

Speaker 2 5:55

To make it to the NFL and become a Hall of Famer .

Speaker 1 5:59

Those are big goals . Yeah , I love that . You want to do that . So what team do you want to play for ?

Speaker 2 6:05

I want to play for the Steelers , and if I don't get drafted by the Steelers , I'm going to be drafted by the Minnesota Vikings . Oh , you like the Vikings , uh-huh . Why do you like them ? Because they have lots of good players and also their old running back used to be named Delvin Cook . Oh , so you have the same last name , uh-huh .

Speaker 1 6:23

Nice . Do you have a shirt Do ? You have a shirt , yeah , that's pretty cool Outside of just football . So let's say you play football . Is there anything else that you want to do in your life other than football ?

Speaker 2 6:31

when you grow up I want to be , instead of in the NFL , I want to be a streamer , like a video game streamer .

Speaker 1 6:38

Wow , that sounds interesting . So how do you do that ?

Speaker 2 6:49

What does that mean for the people that don't understand ? It's just like so you like make an account on YouTube and you start like posting videos and you can also press live stream and you can just like live stream whatever you want technically .

Speaker 1 6:54

So you can make money doing that right .

Speaker 2 6:56

Oh yeah , you can get donations .

Speaker 1 6:58

So that's how you make money . Do you have your own page yet ?

Speaker 2 7:00

I have my own YouTube channel , but I'm not allowed to do live streams . Oh no , well , you will be one day know when your mom's ready , she'll let you know . So you have your own youtube channel . What is it ? What's the name of it ? It's easy games . It's a capital e and capital z at the beginning of the easy games .

Speaker 1 7:19

Yeah , I know that you love football . Is there any other sports ?

Speaker 2 7:21

that you like ? I like baseball . Well , I played baseball . How about hockey ? I play with my friends you do .

Speaker 1 7:26

Do you like hockey ? Do you like the penguins ?

Speaker 2 7:28

and the um . I don't really like pay attention to baseball or any kind of sports except football . Like watching them . But I have been to a pirates and penguins game before you have that's cool .

Speaker 1 7:40

I've been to a couple of myself . I do love the penguin . It's kind of fun to go to see the penguin .

Speaker 2 7:44

It's cold in there and yeah it's's less intense than the Steelers stadiums .

Speaker 1 7:49

Yeah , the Steelers stadiums it gets really crazy , yeah , really intense . Have you ever been to a game where they played one of the division rivals ?

Speaker 2 7:55

No , I did go to a game this year where we played the Patriots .

Speaker 1 7:59

Oh yeah , that's not a good thing , patriots . We don't like them here in Pittsburgh .

Speaker 2 8:03

No , because they have six Super Bowl ones . They have six Super Bowl ones and if they win a Super Bowl they're going to beat our record .

Speaker 1 8:08

Who's the other team that has six Super Bowls ?

Speaker 2 8:10

We're the only teams Steelers and New England . How many does San Francisco have ?

Speaker 1 8:14

I think they have five . Yeah , that's pretty cool . They're getting close , though I don't really want them to win anything .

Speaker 2 8:18

The Chiefs used to only have two . Now they have four because they've won you , travis .

Speaker 1 8:24

Kelsey . Oh yeah , yeah , he's pretty cool . Yeah , what do you think about him ? And Taylor Swift ?

Speaker 2 8:28

Oh good , yeah , it's pretty cool . I think they make a good pair . I think Travis Kelsey looks a little too old , though , and Taylor Swift looks a little young . You think she's pretty . She looks young and Travis Kelsey looks kind of old .

Speaker 1 8:40

Yeah , yeah , she's definitely she is younger than him , I believe A hundred percent . So what other hobbies or interests do you have other than video games and football ?

Speaker 2 8:50

Food competitions . I'd like to be in food competitions one day . What is that ? It's a food competition Like eating the most hot dogs .

Speaker 1 8:59

Yeah eating the most food . What kind of food could you win at ? Oh , chugging water . Oh well , that's not even food , that's water .

Speaker 2 9:09

It's still a competition kind of how much water can you chug ? I can maybe chug like one of those little bottles in like 10 seconds . Wow , that's cool .

Speaker 1 9:19

So this is one of my favorite questions that I'm going to ask you . I want you to think really hard about it . Okay , if you could have any superpower , what would it be ?

Speaker 2 9:28

and why ? Okay this , yeah this is going to be hard . Oh , I thought of one . Okay , go ahead , it'd be to be really fast . And also because that could help me in the NFL for being like a running back or like wide receiver . So it'd be something like Superman fast yeah . Or like .

Speaker 1 9:45

Flash fast , Flash fast , oh Flash . That's cool . There's one football player they used to call what the heck was his name . He had that nickname . So I don't know if you ever heard of Deion Sanders . You ever hear of Deion Sanders , oh yeah .

Speaker 2 9:56

I've heard of Deion Sanders . Yeah , they call him Primetime and that's where I got my nickname .

Speaker 1 10:00

Primetime , Although I'm older than him . Whenever he came out in the NFL and he played baseball , they would call him Primetime , and so I got that nickname too . So that's what all my close you know chill help work a lot of times , get money . Do you get paid ? Sometimes Chachi pays me like five dollars a week . That's cheap . That's pretty cheap . You gotta ask her for a raise . I mean it's better than nothing . I mean it is definitely better . Your mom and Chachi are really good to you , aren't they ? You're a special kid , Ezra , yeah . So let's say something to the audience that you want to tell them , about you or about your life that you'd like them to know .

Speaker 2 10:45

We'll do about my life , About my life . It's good to be a kid and you might want to grow up , but in reality , when you start growing up , you figured out that it's really bad and you want to be young for a lot of times

Inspiring Young Football Star's Interview

Speaker 2 10:58

.

Speaker 1 10:58

Because you see things differently , right ? Uh-huh , you don't have stress . Do you have stress ? Yeah , what you don't have stress , right ?

Speaker 2 11:03

No , that's nice , yeah , so how long before you get back to school ? Maybe , I think , 22 more days .

Speaker 1 11:10

22 more days , oh no 20 days , 20 days and you'll still be working at your job here for the next 20 days .

Speaker 2 11:16

Yeah , for a couple more days , that's cool .

Speaker 1 11:18

Well , it's been a pleasure to have you on today and I'm so glad you're my youngest person ever and you'll probably be my most famous Good , so thank you very much . You're welcome . Have a good day Bye , bye , everyone .