Robservations – It’s finally time to kick things off
You’ve got to love this time of year.
Sure, the weather’s hotter than Jessica Alba ‘ wearing a down-filled parka, sitting next to a fireplace, eating habanero peppers.
But it’s football season!
All week long, Pioneer football teams have hit the Nunley Stadium gridiron, from Tuesday’s middle school game to last night’s freshman tilt. And the main event is tonight, when the high school varsity version of the Pioneers takes on neighboring DeKalb County.
The past few weeks leading up to tonight’s game seemed to fly by, and that’s just in my opinion. I’m sure to the coaches and players who have been getting ready for the season, it’s seemed like an eye-blink.
But ready or not, here we go. And from what I’ve seen, this year’s Pioneers ‘ and their fans ‘ are ready.
The fans showed how ready they were last Friday night, when they packed downtown McMinnville to give their support to footballers from pee-wee age all the way to the high school level.
I, for one, was pleasantly surprised to see the hordes of people who braved the heat to come out for Main Street’s tailgate party/pep rally. With support like that a week before the game, I can only imagine what tonight’s crowd is going to be like. And, like some other columnists have already expressed this week, I’d like to see events such as last Friday’s tailgating extravaganza become more than just a once-a-year tradition.
Next year, however, I have a few requests. One, let’s do something about the heat. And two, if I get back into that dunking booth, the price is going up to $5 a ball.
So the fans are ready. But are the players ready?
You bet they are. They want to get on that field tonight as badly as a PETA member wants into the jury box at the Michael Vick trial. Because after weeks of putting their bodies through the heat, the stress and the pain of practice, now it’s time to show it was all worth it.
Over the summers, people often ask me how the football team looks. Usually, I’ll hold my hand up at about nose-level and say ‘they’re all about this high, wearing blue shirts.’ Or, if they ask what the team’s going to do this year, I’ll reply ‘play at least 10 games, no more than 15, usually on Friday nights.’
But in all seriousness, this year’s Pioneer team looks eager, it looks experienced, and it looks to be in better shape physically than any WCHS team I’ve seen in the past seven years.
I’ve watched as players encouraged each other on the practice field, pushing themselves farther than they’ve ever been. In years past, that hasn’t always been the case. We won’t name any names, but let’s just say there were players on the WCHS roster who didn’t believe there was an ‘I’ in ‘team,’ but they could find the word ‘me’ pretty easily.
But egos get checked pretty quickly when you’re running 100-yard sprints in 100-degree heat, and you begin working as a team toward your goals, not the least of which is leaving the field tonight with a decisive victory.
The time is here, and we’re all ready. It’s football time in McMinnville, Tennessee. You’ve got to love it.