we won because the other team sucked goats. big hairy ones. monkeys too. i went to watch my old high school last thursday evening play a football game (that's american football, with all its start-stop-start-stop action, over-sized safety pads and homoerotic, bum-slapping fun) against an old rival, detroit catholic central.
it was a fairly impromptu game, announced only a week prior. it wasn't a part of the regular season play; just an old-fashioned challenge issued by our coach to dcc and they came to meet it, the poor bastards. the evening was perfect: brisk, but not cold, the leaves were changing colors, and the stars were out in multitudes (not that you could see them above the stadium lights). I showed up early to laugh at my old marching band stumble around the field during the pregame show and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the marching, accuracy of the formations (the 5-pointed star was bang on, and that's a particulary difficult one), and the reasonably well-blended sound. The trombones need to get their act together, but that's S.O.P. for the boners (i know, having been a high-school boner myself for 2 years).
then the kickoff. now, i know that lumen christi (yep, that's my school: "light of christ" in the most pretentious languge ever uttered. need i say more?) is a football juggernaut. we've got enough state championship banners to carpet the hallways, but dcc should have been better competition. back in the day they had a spectacular team, and even now their first string is a bunch of 6'4", 250 lb. black kids from da hood. against a bunch of pampered mammas' boys from the burbs there really shouldn't have been much of a contest. sigh.
given how badly they played, it's mildly embarassing that we didn't beat them by more than 25 points. i wasn't paying attention to the lineup, but i really hope that the frosh and 3rd string got a go, cause this was their night to shine. i'll spare you the play-by-play, but i will give you a shining example of the deterioration of the dcc football program: first quarter, 6th down, dcc in posession. lc attempts a sack, the dcc quarterback unloads the ball in time, the pass is complete and their receiver breaks free and makes a 30 yard sprint. he's wide open, there isn't another player near him. he's out in no-man's-land, and there's nothing between him, the end-zone, and the first touchdown of the game. except his own feet. 2 yards from the zone he trips on NOTHING, falls over his own feet and lands flat on his face. 2 yards from the touchdown!!! poor slob won't live that one down for the rest of his sorry, non-football playing life. (i hope the kid's parents got it on video, because at least then they can send it in to america's funniest home videos and take a shot at the $10,000 prize.) our defense pushed it back after that, and we scored the first touchdown with 1 minute to go in the first quarter. at one point they did manage to get a 3-point field goal, but those were the only 3 points they got the entire game. when i left with 6 minutes to go in the 4th quarter lumen was up 28 to 3. at one point in the game i actually saw the ball bounce off the wide-receiver's helmet when he failed to catch the pass. sad, sad, sad.
so that was basically the whole game. they would fumble something, we would recover it, score, and play the fight song. wash, rinse, repeat. but it was a nice evening. i never got to watch the games in high school because i was always too busy with my music or trying to keep my fingers from freezing off. so thursday night i sat halfway up on the 50-yard line with my LC sweatshirt and my hot chocolate and screamed myself hoarse before the half, chatted with old friends and teachers, met the new band-parents, waved at j.w., and wallowed in what really is a great american tradition.
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