Mrs. Linklater's Football Column #3

There is a town about thirty minutes from me that is big enough to have three high schools. They all have the same name followed by their location, East, West, and South. For some reason they don't have a North. Apparently someone came up with the idea of letting kids go to whichever school they wanted to attend.  So all the smart kids go to one school and all the athletic kids go to one of the others. I don't know who goes to the third school. Hoodlums? Pregnant girls? Teachers with only one arrest for kiddy porn? 

Last year the school with all the athletic kids went to the state championship in football.

For some reason the school with all the smart kids still has a football team of its own. 

Last night my old high school played this ragtag bunch of computer geniuses. It was 21 to nothing before three minutes had passed in the first quarter.

So the coach made wholesale substitutions. The entire second team came in. By the end of the first quarter the score was 35 to nothing. 

There are over ninety boys on my alma mater's team. The other team had thirty-five kids.

They had almost as many cheerleaders as players, I noticed.  It was a good squad with cute uniforms, really snazzy pom poms, and plenty of guys to hoist the girls up in the air and make pyramids. They were a goodlooking, precision drilled group.  But it was pathetic watching them go through their cheers for a team that spent most of its time on its own twenty yard line.

Unlike the visiting team, my old high school doesn't have any cheerfleaders or pom pom girls -- even though there are over four thousand kids who go there. I think they took the feminist movement VERY seriously. 

Even though the music department is huge, they also don't have a marching band either. Instead one of the four or five jazz bands played during the game and halftime. That was cool. They were very good. They just didn't march or play marching music. There was a girls' dance team perfomance at half time. I guess a dance team is okay. But apparently, cheerleaders and pom pom girls are too 1960's. I don't know what the deal is about not having a marching band.

By the end of the first half the score of the football game was 55 to nothing. In the second half, the fourth team went in. Finally, the scoring stopped. Some people love it when it's a slaughter.  No need to worry about the outcome. But it's not fun to watch. 

I was impressed with one thing: Despite the fact that they had no hope of winning, the kids on the visiting team never gave up.  They ran on and off the field with enthusiasm. They jumped up after every play, as if the score was much closer. At the end, there were even a couple of guys who left it all on the field and had to be helped off.  I would have saved it for another day. Sitting there watching the carnage, you'd never know this hapless team was being crushed if you went by anybody's body language or willingness to go back out there for more punishment again and again. 

In about three weeks the school with the athletic kids will be coming to town. The one that's ranked among the top teams in the state. 

That will be a good game. As opposed to last night's human sacrifice.