The football season has begun..
Football Section
I lost in both of my fantasy football leagues and due to the vikings playing on Monday night I will be losing my Fantasy Family league as well. (insert igonored wife joke here)Quick impressions.. It is the first game of the year so they don't mean a whole lot but it does tell you something.. Yes the packers are that bad.. Is Carolina going to be angry coming into to play the Vikes.. Atl looks good.. Dallas is going to be tough.. Cincy is just as good or better than last year.. Baltimore will dominate if they can keep Mcnair healthy.. Enough of that.
WHS
I got a note from WHS the other night that they are going to having a "20 celebration" of the 86 football that went undefeated and won a state championship on homecoming.. I am going back for a lot of reasons but mosty because it something that in my life that will always be perfect and unnaffected by everything after it.. IJ could go back but for other reasons beyond football he will not.. This is going to sound schamtlzy but I need to tell you why it is perfect.. I believe everyone from the 1980 season and on should be celebrated in this game. I could go on and on this subject but to keep it somewhat short.. WHS before this was a small town that had never won a thing in sports short of a few wrestlers winning a state championship. The football team used to get beat like a drum each year and had the tradition of playing there games on the outfield of the baseball park in town. My oldest brother the orginal Heavy started playing at that time which just so happens to be when they started playing a lot better. I won't go into this but he is the reason that this event is still perfect to me.. Fast forward to 84 season and the team has a tradition of making the playoffs and this is the year that they legitamely could play in the dome. But something else has happened in these years to all the little rug rats that are playing tackle football at the games behind the stands. All of them I mean every kid that can blink and breathe at same time hopes he can have a shot at going out there and playing for the team. They now have there own football stadium with a manicured field that only they play on and that lights up the skies on a Friday night.. I think you end up playing less than 7 games at home each year but each one is special. I still remember the day I was handed my red white and blue uniform. I bought the matching red white and blue socks (They where pathetic but not to me) and I thought I had finally made it but nothing compared to the night you first put on the uniform. Every kid would sit in class on Friday and wait for the day to be over with so you could go home and relax before the game.. I remember getting into the car and I would have my duffle bag full of my uniform and I would clutch it like it was a new born baby.. Then, to make it more surreal you would get to the school and our coach had a rule that no one was allowed to speak in the locker room before the game.. You would get to your locker and take 4 times as long as it would normally take to get your pads in your pants and hip pads on straight but really you where just soaking up the feeling before the game.. That feeling that you where unbeatable you whole town was going to watch your team win.. Losing or the fear of it never entered your mind. And your mind is focussed and you are just itching to get out there and hear that sound.. This is going to sound weird but the sound I would hear is the click clack as the Under Armor commercial keeps referring you. We would walk onto the field with the whold stadium filled with everyone in town and the band playing but all I could ever hear is the sound all of our cleats made when they tapped the plywood board put across the track surface as we walked onto the field.. I was a football player I was apart of something special for our little town. I could really bore you with details all of which are still fresh in my mind 20 years later but the memories are still perfect of that perfect season. WHS has not won a state championship since and maybe never will but we will always have that one year.. PERFECT
More later..
Vikes predictions please..
Washington 17 Vikings 10
4 comments:
Did you get that wordage from "Friday Night Lights"?
Vikes 20, Wash 16
Your memories from that golden season are wonderful, however, I've heard tell that your experience was not the experience of all.
I've heard that some kids, no names mentioned, joined the team because they had to, and attended practice with the full knowledge that they would have their butt handed to them by larger, tougher, more skilled kids, day in and day out.
On game days, these pathetic kids would sit in class and earnestly pray to God that they wouldn't embarras themselves in front of the whole town/school, secretly hoping the game would be cancelled and everyone could just go to the pizza party.
When the coach invited the kids to "take a nervous leak" before the game if needed, some kids really just wanted to vomit and ride home in their K-car (if they had one).
Their letter jackets had an upside-down "M" because the maker ran out of "W"s. These kids wore these badges of shame with the full knowlegde that fixing the problem wan't really even worth it. Who would even know.
Oh, I would hate to be one of those kids...
Vikings 21 Washington 13
How bout them Packers.......
D,
I'm with you...and this is one of your best narratives to date by the way...my impression was the same, and although my class was only the spring board for you "State" guys, I still think back fondly to running out onto the field...but I especially remember as a senior the absolute terror/thrill of having blue-99 called either in the huddle or better yet, as an audible...that feeling like...this is it...I'm really out here playing h.s. football and the ball's coming to me...what a rush...a lot like a good competitive trial, I get that same sort of feeling, although nothing like being winded and banged up, but in good enough shape physically to manage things reasonably well...ah, youth!!!...plus the cool fall breeze...everytime summer starts to end, and I catch a whiff of that fall air...I think back to duck hunting, pheasant hunting, and WHS football...
IJ...so you'd have rather been playing flute next to the snake-woman than suiting-up with the boys and having your shot at glory...I was a role player just like you most of my football career, and loved every memory of it...even the charachter building stuff...what would you rather have been doing? Did someone make you join? I think one of the great gifts our parents gave us was making us do stuff, and not letting us join Goltz and Hilton in the WADS trenchcoat mafia...your daddy done good for you boy.
Later,
JLO
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