Are you ready for some (high school) football?

[yendi]

So, we attended our first high school football game last night, as Elayna's in band (sitting band, not marching), and they played at the game.

For those of you with visions of Friday Night Lights or Varsity Blues in your head, get them out now. Even ignoring the fact that the folks on the field were 14-17 years old (instead of 22-30 as in those movies), this was also division III. And it was a hell of a mismatch. The final score was 34-0, and the other team, sadly, ended the game with negative yardage. Seriously. Their only first down came on a pass interference call. Their defense wasn't much better,

So I've got no idea if our town has a good football team, as this was the sort of mismatch that makes mediocre teams look great.

That said, it was a fun enough experience. The band clearly had fun, and the crowd, small as it was, enjoyed the game. The one kickoff return for a touchdown was great, as was the 43-yard TD run. Still, I'm just not sure I get the thrill of high school football, and will likely still to watching the pro stuff.

Comments

[jerel.livejournal.com]

See, I always went to games to hang out near the band. My buddies were all in band, and they were much more interesting than the idiots on the field. (This is not a generalization about jocks=idiot, because that's not true. But our football players? Dumber than a bag of hammers.)

[aiela.livejournal.com]

The one thing I've found about high school football (Brittany is in the marching band) is that although our team is terrible, I have a great time watching the students in the stands, because they are having SO MUCH FUN. They are chanting along with the cheerleaders, they're coming up with their own chants, the band is chanting back and forth with the cheerleaders (when the drum line doesn't spontaneously break out into song, and then the rest of the band leaps to their feet and starts dancing.)

Meanwhile, the football team is losing 44-0 at halftime.

But the kids don't care. They're all in their "replica" football jerseys, 8 out of every ten kids has on school color beads or a teeshirt, or has their face painted, and they are just LOVING every second of the game, even when the mercy rule kicks in at halftime and the clock runs down non-stop through the entire second half.

Maybe it's because we're in a town with a horrible football team, but the game is so ... not about the game. Its about the marching band, and the dance team, and the kids out there screaming with school spirit. Their colors are black, blue and silver, and today they had a "black out" and everyone wore black in support of the football team. They have teeshirts with raven footprints across the back that say "Paint it black".

I absolutely love it, even as I'm shaking my head at the football team.

[rubian77.livejournal.com]

They have both a sitting band AND a marching band? Wow. I've never heard of that...but then, it's hard enough to get enough students to assemble a marching band here.

[blitheandbonny.livejournal.com]

For real, high school football put me off the game for LIFE. 4 years, and I only ever missed one game, and that was for an art workshop out of state. The best part of the season was post-competition, when we stopped practicing the half-time show at all and had to make it up as we went along when we inevitably forgot our places and all of the music.