Leaving It All on the Field

Sometimes I get stuck. I have spent five hours in the last two days pounding keys and getting nothing that would interest you, the listener, in the least. I think I put myself to sleep a couple of times. I took a break to pick up a couple of prescriptions at Fort Mill Pharmacy and Pam, who works there and is always complementary of my podcasts, asked how it was going. She shouldn’t have. I unloaded the frustrations of finding a fresh story

line. She was right there with a solution.

“Write about football and the high school. You know, pep rallies and all that.”

She didn’t know that I would do just that but with a twist. I would have to write about football games as seen from the sidelines. That was my viewpoint…the sidelines. Let me remind you that I was not a great athlete in high school. I limit my confession to high school so that you can imagine me slamming a two-hundred and fifty yard drive down the middle of the fairway off the tee of hole number 12. You can imagine it but it is never going to happen.

Fort Mill High School football was a little different in the mid 1960’s. The game was pretty much the same but with less jazzy helmets and uniforms. It was a time when no one was grooming high school players for careers as professional athletes. There were a few good players who hoped for scholarships but most of the guys were there because they loved the game and they were proud to represent their schools.

On the days of home football games, students would crowd into the gym for the last period of the day. The painted Yellow Jacket, boxing gloves raised for a fight, gleamed in the center of the glossy floor. For big games, the pep band, mostly brass and drums, would play over the voices of excited students. With the first few notes of the fight song, the cheerleaders, in their blue and gold uniforms would rush onto the court, pon-pons waving in the air, leading the team onto the floor. Players with their game jerseys over school clothes would charge onto center court where they would pile into a big disorganized pyramid.

Once the crowd was calm enough, one of the cheerleaders would take a mic and introduce the starting players. As each name was called, the player would run to the front amid roars of support. After the first twenty or so introductions the announcer would say, “And the rest of the Fighting Yellow Jackets!” I proudly took my place in that last anonymous group. In my prayers at night, I never needed to pray for humility. There was plenty of that going around.

A pep rally could range from wild to chaotic with threats of all sorts of violence against those Lewisville Lions or York Green Dragons. Rally signs were team specific with sayings like “Tame the Lions or Slay the Dragons.” Terms like “kill” and “murder” and “demolish” were common and sometimes taken to the extreme.

The times of school shootings had not arrived and “Bury the Red Devils” was understood as trash talk. In one of my yearbooks, there is a photo of a student in a top hat leading six football players who are carrying a coffin with the name of the other team emblazoned on the side. I believe a full funeral service was conducted. Okay, it was in very poor taste but it was great fun.

I was on the football team for my freshman and sophomore years and got a little play time when we held an uncatchable lead. In one game I was in at defensive end. The other team was so desperately behind that they decided to try a trick play. The team lined up as usual, but at a call from the quarterback, the entire team shifted to one side of the center…my side of the center. There I was, responsible for containing the run, facing their entire line. The play started and everybody came my way… everybody except a halfback who took the hand-off and reversed across the field. The play didn’t work as he was caught in the backfield. From underneath an unnecessary pile of blockers, I was grateful to be alive and glad the runner went the other way.

I started team training in my junior year in 1964. I was also working out with the swim team. After a hot August morning on the practice field, I would spend the afternoon training with the swim team. Somehow the combination of the two produced terrible leg cramps, so bad that one sport had to go. After sitting down and carefully evaluating my situation, I saw my dilemma as this: I could get banged around as a defensive end and run wind sprints until I threw up or I could swim up and down the length of a cool swimming pool and talk to girls in bathing suits. For me, the pool wins every time.

I admired those friends who endured heat and bruises and physical exhaustion for a chance to be the best. During my freshman year, when I believed there was still hope that I could develop as a player, the older guys were like superheroes. One player in particular was the player I wanted to be like. Jake Couch, a rangy senior who played tight end was always kind and took me under his wing to teach me how to play the position. He always had a great sense of humor and played the sport with all the energy he could muster. I remember after one game Coach Walser bragged on his performance. Jake had caught every pass thrown to him and intercepted two more. Jake’s response was an embarrassed laugh. I am still in awe.

Even after I left the team, I went to every game. My friends were on the field as players, cheer leaders and band members. While it sounds like I was the only student left in the stadium seats, I was not. There were lots of students who enjoyed our Friday nights without making an appearance on the field. We dressed in our coolest clothes for the dance after and sat in the student section beside the band. Parents, alumni and local fans crowded into Memorial Stadium to sit on the wooden bleachers. Fans of the opponents were relegated to open frame bleachers across the field and must have been miserable on a windy night in late October.

Just before game time, the cheerleaders would gather at the bottom of the field below the scoreboard. Fort Mill Times editor and voice of the Jackets, Bill Bradford would announce the National Anthem and a local minister would pray for the safety of both teams. Occasionally a particularly fervent preacher would slip a little sermonizing into a longish prayer.

When the time came, Mr. Bradford would say “Let’s bring on the Jackets! The cheerleaders would stretch out a paper banner, painted with catchy phrases like, “Go Jackets!” or “Sting the Wildcats!” Amid the blasting of the fight song by the band and the loud cheers and applause of the fans, the Fighting Yellow Jackets would roar down the hill and crash through the banner and onto the sidelines. Behind them came the coaches led by Jim Walser at his trademark leisurely pace.

I don’t ever remember the opposing team coming onto the field. It is my belief that they were in such awe of the Yellow Jackets that they sneaked quietly onto their sidelines.

Stand-outs my senior year were Tommy Chapman at quarterback, Joe Lowder at fullback and Clifford Boyd and Donnie Shaw at running backs. James Boan and Millen Hamilton were solid on the line. There were many other good players but time and age limit my memory. If I had the ability, I would list them all. Win or lose, those guys gave their best to every game.

Off the field, the action was at the concession stand where the volunteers from the American Legion in their yellow garrison caps would serve up hundreds of hot dogs and cokes. There were candy bars and popcorn but fans stood in lines ten deep for a hot dog and a paper boat full of hot fries.

Fans in the student section sat by the band. My two best friends were in the band. I asked one of them, John, to remind me about the fight song. He told me it was the Michigan fight song and I said, “Is that the one that goes ‘da, da ,da, da da, da, da, da,da da?” and he said yes, but don’t do that.Students were sometimes paired off for the post game dance but for the game we were all Jacket fans. The cheerleaders faced the student section and I confess that I might have missed an important play or two during a particularly entertaining cheer. Most of the time I was able to focus on what was happening on the field.

When the final whistle blew, we would celebrate the victory or console ourselves for the loss with a dance at the American Legion. Football players were the glory dates for many girls, but I could hold my own. There were any number of great looking girls out there who were willing to bide their time with me until someone better came along. I am indebted to them all for the fun we had and the lessons I learned. Okay, a few of you might have crushed my hopes to powder but that is standard issue in high school.

I don’t know if the time was simpler or if we were cocooned in our own little space, but our joys were local, our relationships more personal and our lives less guarded. There was as much heartbreak and hunger and fear in the world as there is today but it came to us in a newspaper or for half an hour on the six-o-clock news. With today’s technology we hear and see the injustices and hatred and are constantly bombarded with ways we are different.

But on a chilly Friday night or a fall weekend, a strange phenomenon occurs. We forget racial and political bias for a few hours and we put on our best blue and gold or garnet and black or orange and purple and join with hundreds or thousands of others who are suddenly our people. We slap each other on the back and celebrate victory together. We groan and complain together in loss. We find our commonality in sports. Unfortunately, to use a sports metaphor, we leave it all on the field. All too often we leave the stadium, return home, take off our jerseys and slip right back into our biases.

As my friend John would say, “Don’t do that!”