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| Will Nations & Chris Sartin, 2010 |
I have been going to high school football games for years. As a young child in Bay St. Louis, I can remember playing under the bleachers with the other kids, throwing crumpled up paper cups back and forth at each other. I don't remember sitting and watching the game very much but I do remember wandering over to the chain link fence at half time and watching a twirler in the band who would light her baton as the stadium lights were turned off, tossing the fiery stick high into the air. At the time, it seemed almost like Cirque Du Soleil.
After my family moved to Jackson, the Jim Hill Tigers became my team and we were pretty terrible. But football was only one reason that you went to the game on Friday night. As I had gotten older, I had advanced from below the bleachers to being a member of the student section.
As a non-football player, the game had a social aspect to it. Often times, my friend, John Slater and I would go to the games together. I remember one Friday; it was cool, almost cold outside. I was approached in the hall by a pretty dark haired, buxom girl, who asked, "You want'a go to the game tonight?" There she stood in front of me, a tight fitting sweater, curves everywhere, her asking me out to the game on a cold night, her dark brown eyes waiting for an answer. Oh, and I gave her one alright... "I'm going with Slater." Yeah, honestly, that is what I said. Not many days later I would come to my senses and realize how stupid I had been... "I'm going with Slater." What kind of answer was that? I suppose my social skills equaled our team's talent.
In 1986, I moved to Clinton and have been going to Clinton Arrow football games ever since. I have seen some very good teams and some not so good teams. In 2008, my son, Will, began playing football for the Arrows as a kicker/punter. I had always enjoyed the games but all of a sudden I was a nervous wreck every time he touched the field. It had never occurred to me that when the kicker crosses the line going onto the field, the scoreboard reads one way, and when the kicker returns, the scoreboard should have changed. Will did well and we endured and honestly, by his second year, all was better for his nervous parents.
There is one thing that I absolutely love about high school football. As the team at Clinton walks off of the field, you see kids of all sizes, shapes, colors, socio-economic backgrounds and sometimes religions. They play football together because they love the game, but they also play it for another reason: to represent themselves, their school and their community well. That alone is reason enough to go and support your local team. Go Arrows!
