This Time of Year

This time of year always calls forth a certain amount of nostalgia for me. I will forever equate this time of year with the adolescent right of passage known as two-a-days.

My first experience with two-a-days was in August 1972. As a fourteen year old sophomore I had been called to work out with the varsity at Arlington High. Expectations were high for the 1972 season. After two back-to-back district championships, the Colts were returning several starters and a couple of High School All-Americans. This was back in the day when only one team – the District Champion – went to the playoffs. It was also a time when there were no choices about two-a-days in August or an intense round of spring training. We did both and the start of the August practices was regulated by the UIL.

I will never forget the start of that first practice. Coach Carter called us together under the pecan trees at the north end of the practice field. In his distinct voice, he said:

“Somewhere in the state of Texas today the next state champion is practicing. Last year it was in San Antonio, the year before it was in Austin. ... But somewhere today, the next state champion is practicing. Let’s make it right here!”

I remember it like it was yesterday.

I still get goose bumps telling that story. We didn’t win the state championship, but we did win the district. We didn’t do a lot of winning during my junior or senior years – at least not on the field. But it was during those years with Coach Carter and his best friend, Assistant Coach Bob Howington, that I learned there were more important lessons to be learned. It was under their influence that I began to understand the importance of character.

There are those who are critical of the role of athletics in education. To those critics I would say that I had no classroom teacher that cared more about me as young man than Coach Carter and Coach Howington did. I wasn’t just an athlete to them.

To those critics I would also point out the number of kids that have something to be involved in on Friday nights. Whenever I go to a high school game, I am always impressed by the number of kids that are involved in something bigger than themselves on Friday nights: Band, Cheerleading, Pep Squad, Drill Team, Student Trainers, and Student Managers. And at Euless Trinity High School (where all of my kids went) many of the developmentally challenged kids are a big part of the football game because they serve as ball boys and pick up kicking tees after kickoffs. You can see the joy in their smiles as they participate in the big show.

I think H.G. Bissinger caught the essence of High School Football in the following passage from his book, Friday Night Lights. Let me set the scene for you. The West Texas district had ended in a 3-way tie between Odessa Permian, Midland High, and Midland Lee. The tie-breaker was a coin toss, with the “odd man out.” The Permian and Midland Lee coaches both tossed heads; the Midland coach tossed tails and was the odd man out.

At about 2:45 that Saturday morning the Midland coach spoke to his team after returning from the coin toss at The Convoy Truck Stop: “I told you that we had no control over a coin flip. I wish I could change the way things are, but I can’t. … I’m proud of each and every one of you.”

Then Bissinger writes: “As he tried to console them, there came a sound of high school football as familiar as the cheering, as familiar as the unabashed blare of the band, as familiar as the savage crash of pad against pad.

It was the sound of teenage boys weeping uncontrollably over a segment of their lives that they knew had just ended forever.”

I remember it like it was yesterday.