Friday, September 08, 2006
The High School Football Scene
Last Friday evening I sat in the bleachers at School Field, cheering on my neighborhood high school football team, the Adams Eagles, against their arch-rivals, the St. Joe’s Indians. My presence there was a kind of self-administered medicine. I travel a lot, especially in the summer, usually to far away places. But for some reason I always buy a round trip ticket, so that I end up, sooner or later, right back here in South Bend, Indiana. At home again, I indulge right away in a few local amusements, like the zoo or the 4H Fair, to re-connect. This summer I added a high school football game to my list, and it had the desired effect of helping me feel a bit more grounded.
School Field is near my house. Fans in my neighborhood simply walk to the game. They don’t need to consult their watches, because the high school band performs a Pied Piper routine, marching in formation down Wall Street from the high school parking lot to Sunnyside, then under the railroad bridge and along the curving route to Jefferson School, the site of School Field. It’s a sweet ritual. Small children drag their parents to the curb to enjoy the spectacle—the flag corps, then the horns, the drums and cymbals, more horns, and finally the red equipment trailer. Hearing the sparkly tune, small groups of people, converging from all directions, follow the band to the game.
At the game, socializing is the main attraction. Knots of parents converse. Stampedes of teenage girls flow this way and that, and packs of boys lope along, eying them. Smaller children follow or form their own raiding parties. You see pairs of boys, pairs of girls, who are obviously best friends, little chatty islands of happiness. A gaggle of popular kids, the girls’ bellies painted with letters, comprise a rowdy little cheering section. They seem mostly to be the girlfriends of football players, with their retinue of non-athletic courtiers.
In a defensive battle, the Indians won the game by five points, and only because they returned a blocked field goal. On the Adams side was the glory of having regained possession of the ball late in the fourth quarter by means of a goal line stand. They just couldn’t move the ball afterwards.
Although the spectators were engrossed in the closing drama, they were nothing like the bloodthirsty crowd you’d find in West Texas, for example. Maybe Notre Dame Football overshadows everything else; or maybe, as Midwesterners, we know how to keep things in perspective—but it struck me that everyone had come to the game intent merely on enjoyment. That was true even of the two fanatical men seated behind me, who hollered so enthusiastically and continuously that they worked themselves into a state of ecstasy and seemed to exist on a different plane than the rest of us.
I felt sorry only for a few of the high school boys, shy bleacher flowers who pretended to watch the game but were really girl-watching in a defeated sort of way, their looks tinged with something more like horror than lust. I understood. High school girls are just as scary now as they were when I inhabited that purgatory: socially aggressive, hungry for the kind of ultimate acceptance that only celebrities can hope to attain. I wanted to tell the boys, Wait. In another ten years they’ll have calmed down enough for you to talk to them.
In the meanwhile, let the high school football scene be a refuge, a safe gathering place for all classes of kids and adults. Like the teams themselves, the crowds are interracial and cooperative. The good, the bad, and the ugly are all accepted there, for a small entrance fee. And even if you have no one to talk to, there are football players to watch, and members of the marching band, all striving to please, all of them hoping for your applause.
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Joe Chaney -- The High School Football Scene / More essays by Joe
Louise Collins -- More essays by Louise
April Lidinsky -- More essays by April
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About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, and Ken Smith.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
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