By Joe Schackman
For a very brief time I was indeed a professional writer. And by professional writer, I mean someone paid me very little to watch mediocre high school sports.
One local football team that I covered was especially terrible. They were returning the majority of the starters from the previous year’s team, which normally is a good sign. Experience is hard to come by in high school athletics. But last year’s team had failed to win even a single game. They got beaten up, pushed around and flat-out wrecked in every contest.
Everyone pretended this year would be different. They threw out every cliché in the book, hoping that if they said it enough times, it may actually come true.
But it did not, and this group of young men got the shit kicked out of them in just about every game, both on the scoreboard and physically. Sports can be mighty cruel sometimes.
Emotions ran high throughout the entire season. I saw two parents almost come to blows over who sucked more, the band geeks who played at halftime or “Jerry’s kids,” as one father called the football team. Needless to say, the athletic director kicked them both out.
After games, when I needed quotes, I would find my way to the head coach and ask him everything I needed to fill up my story. One time, after I had turned off my recorder, he revealed how badly he wanted to win. It was not for himself; he had been coaching football for a very long time and had gotten used to the highs and lows. But he wanted it for his players, these kids that came out every day to practice and had few accomplishments to show for it. I swear, he almost started crying.
I never spoke to the players. I should have at least tried to talk to one of them to get some insight. However, after one of the games, I avoided their glances so I wouldn’t add to their pain, wouldn’t make them relieve what just happened. I was only 23 years old, but these guys were truly just kids.
For the last game of the season, I trekked to an away game about 35 minutes from home. It was freezing cold and I had to somehow take pictures, keep stats and find something to write about. Believe me, when a team is consistently getting beat, it is tough to find a story.
And the game started off exactly the same as every other one. The opposing team marched down the field and scored easily. I began snapping pictures while I could, since nothing important would be happening later.
But my team’s offense came on the field and put together a beautiful drive. Probably the nicest I had seen all season, and it didn’t stop there. They continued to do just about everything right, completing long passes for touchdowns, converting critical third downs and playing a stingy and hard-hitting defense. Exactly the type of game they had not played in over two years. They walked off with a big win, so big that I was scratching my head as to how they could not have done this at least one other time throughout the past two season.
At the end of the game, I marched up to two of the team's stars, two of the kids I had avoided all season, and asked their opinions on the games. They literally had nothing to say. They barely got out, “I can’t believe this is over,” or your classic lines about teamwork and hard work. Their coach was unbelievably excited. He knew how bad these kids wanted a win and they went out and got one. He kept saying that he “could not have been prouder.”
I gave the team an unbelievable amount of credit, having spent my fair share of time on sports teams going nowhere. I knew how easy it was to throw in the towel. To see that first score go onto the board and think, Here we go again.
When I sat down the next morning to write my article, I was almost as fired up as the players had been after the game. For once, I did not have to sugarcoat anything. I could put away the bullshit and shower as much praise as possible on these kids who deserved it so much.
When I finished with most of the writing, I did your basic Google search on the opposing team.
Guess what their record finished as, following that loss? 0-10.
Man, sports can be cruel sometimes.
Image via sacbee.com
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