When we started talking about doing these blogs, I was in the middle of taking a speech class and was having to come up with topics for a speech. With that on my mind I decided to make my first blog about one of those topics, the reason we all love high school football. On the last Friday night in August, if your town seems to be a little less crowded than normal, that usually means that you can find everyone at the local football stadium. As the clock strikes 7:15 you can normally look at the sky to see stadium lights and hear the local high school band warming up. As you get closer to the stadium you can smell food on the grill and people whispering about the local teams chances at winning state. Walking into the stadium, you can see the cheerleaders preparing the banner for the team to run through and many old friends welcoming each other back to the stadium. As the clock strikes 7:25, after the prayer has been read and the national anthem played, the crowd stands in unison as the local team hits the field and the fight song is played, you realize it's another football season and your team has just a chance at state, this could be our year. While we all have our favorite college teams, we often choose that team for many different reasons (our dad pulled for that team, we want to pull for a winner, we want to be different and just pull for someone no one else is, etc.) but when it comes to high school football we all have one main reason we pull for that team, we graduated from there. While we pledge our allegiances to pro and college teams, our high school teams are the only ones that truly have a piece of our soul. If you take just the four of us on this blog, we do pull for all our local teams to do well, but it makes our heart fill with a little more pride when each of our alma maters is successful. When Boiling Springs is successful, my season always seems a little brighter. Jed and Travis still speak with great pride of Chapman and Chester's runs to the state championships in 2007. Richard talked with great pride about Woodruff this whole season as they were able to go undefeated most of the season. We feel these feelings about our schools because no matter where we go, a piece of our heart always belongs to our alma mater. When we look at college teams or pro teams there is so much national media covering these teams, either telling you that your team will or won't be very good because of the these Top 10 reasons, that the excitement of the season can almost be diminished before it even starts. If your college team loses two games early, your chances of a championship are over. When it comes to high school football, you pretty much always have a chance. If you lose your out of region games, your next thought is....if we can win in the region, we still have a chance. If you don't do great in the region, your next thought is....if we can just get a good seeding in the playoffs, we still have a chance. We have seen it many times where a mediocre team in the regular season, finally puts it all together and makes a run in the playoffs, and if that is your team, you live and die on every big play that happens during the playoffs. This is why we love high school football, these are our teams and it always seems like our team has a chance. Whenever the season ends for your team, whether it is in triumph of a state championship or in the agony of a heart-breaking defeat, your heart aches because you realize that it will be eight months until your team plays again. The good news is though, that in eight months, you get a chance to do it all again. Just around the corner, we will be making our way back out to the stadium with the rest of the community, with the smell of food in the air and whispers of how our team is going to do. Who knows, this could be our year.
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JamesBoiling Springs native, lover of sports and food. 15x SC Press Association Award Winner. I do some sports writing and radio every now and then. Archives
April 2020
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