By Billy Watkins
Lots of Mawmaws and Pawpaws will be there Friday night. It’s been marked on their refrigerator calendars since Memorial Day. They’re coming to watch their children’s children cheer, dance, twirl or play an instrument in the marching band. Some are coming to clap and yell and steadily pray for their grandsons, whose strength and grit will be tested in a most honorable way.
It’s the official opening of high school football season across Mississippi in towns like Noxapater, Louisville, Clarksdale, Mendenhall, Nanih Waiya, Macon, Winona and Madison.
The ground might shake in Brandon as Tupelo travels south to play the Bulldogs. It’s a rematch of last year’s Class 7A public school state championship game. Tupelo defeated Brandon, 28-16. Both are expected to challenge for the title again. And Brandon has a new coach — Lance Pogue, who won five state championships and one national title in 10 years at South Panola. He is determined to bring Brandon its first.
These openers are a reminder of why we love high school football so much, It’s that first smell you capture from the concession stand grills, that first bite into a burger as the teams go through their warmups.
It’s the national anthem performed by students who have endured the heat of summer practices. They get extra praise if, at some point during the game, they play the greatest high school football band song ever — “The Horse.” It’s the stadium lights finally winning the battle against daylight, truly creating that Friday night lights atmosphere.
It’s little boys with sweaty heads playing cup football behind the bleachers, and men gathering along the chain-link fence that surrounds the field they played on 20, 40, 60 years ago. They’re watching memories being made while revisiting their own.
It’s realizing, for those two or three hours, there is no other place you had rather be.
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Planning for these opening games began around Easter.
“You can’t have slip-ups at the first game,” said Mike Justice, recently inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame after a 35-year-coaching career with 297 wins and four state championships. He won at small schools and big schools. “You’ve got to have a plan. A lot of people help make this happen. You have to have people at the ticket booth, 12 to 15 teachers on duty. Junior high coaches at the visitor’s dressing room to make sure their players can get in and out with no trouble.
“Traffic alone can be a problem if you don’t have the proper number of people handling it. And then there is security. When I was also the athletic director, I’d meet with the local police department, give them a diagram of the campus so they would know where everything was and could make their plans.”
Only one team will walk away happy on this joyous night. Justice offered advice to the coaches.
“If you lose, take the blame. Explain to the kids that, as a coach, you thought you were ready but you weren’t. Tell them, ‘If you’ll hang with me, I’ll do a better job.’ ’“
And what if you win and maybe notice your team getting a little too cocky about it?
Justice answered: “Well, Tuesday afternoon about 3 o’clock we would have a practice that would knock that cockiness right out of them.”
The opening game won’t necessarily reveal how your team will finish. “But I’ll tell you this,” Justice said. “If you’re just trying to improve a program and have a winning season, it’s a really important game. And I’ve been that guy trying to have a winning season.”
But before Friday, before the opening kickoff, before the first hit is delivered, most teams believe it’s their year. I’ve heard it and read it the past month.
“Our team is much closer than last year’s team.”
“We’ve had 95 percent attendance for summer workouts.”
“This bunch just seems hungrier than our teams in recent years.”
All of that is to be proven over the next three months or so.
But that’s not for fans to worry about on opening night. It’s to appreciate another season rolling around, another chance to watch games with friends, to enjoy your children performing in different ways for their school.
And for those families with senior players, it’s to cherish the beginning of what most likely will be the final season of football their son, grandson or sibling will ever play.
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