Since 1987, when we moved to a house bordering Gallagher Park in Lynn, we never had to ask when fall started.
One day, we woke up to the dulcet tones of Ray McDermott calling his St. Mary’s football team to practice. It’s been that way ever since. These days, it’s Sean Driscoll. Over the years, I’ve seen Mike Stellato, Clark Crowley, Jeff Smith, and Matt Durgin.
The purpose isn’t to recite the litany of St. Mary’s coaches since 1987, though. It is to observe the beginning of another school year.
Notice I didn’t say “celebrate.”
“Observe” is a better word. Not once in 13 years did I ever “celebrate” school. I hated it. Those two-and-a-half months from mid-June though August were paradise to me. I didn’t know, or care, that there were kids out there sweating in the same sun I was so good at escaping every day. I’d see Pop Warner kids at Frey Park, but no varsity athletes.
Then I got into high school, and got a good dose of all that I had avoided over the years. And I can’t say I liked it very much. But it did give me an appreciation about all that went into fielding a football team. And I realized the extent of the sacrifice fall athletes make.
Their summer is severely truncated. Not just theirs, but their families’. There’s no planning late-August vacations or quick Labor Day getaways because the athlete-in-training cannot go.
And the athletes? They’re out there in the same 90-degree heat that chases the rest of us to beaches and swimming pools. It might be a little easier now, because there are mandated water breaks, and they’re not dragging an extra 20 pounds of equipment around.
I remember practices in early September, when it can be just as hot as it is in August, where we were always in pads and did not get regular water breaks.
The thing to remember about these high school kids is that nobody is paying them. This isn’t to say that many of them don’t have visions of college scholarships of some sort dancing in their heads. As many times as guidance counselors and college admissions officers try to tamp down expectations, there are kids who think the payoff for all that grunt work in the Augusts of their lives will help them have a lighter financial load in college.
The sad thing is that it’s not as prevalent as they think. Which means that most of them are out in the sun risking heat stroke out for sheer love of both the game and camaraderie.
And I speak from experience. By no stretch of the imagination was I a football player. But you don’t have to be in high school. If you have a propensity for crashing into people, and a willingness to do it, you’ll get on a roster. And then comes the real reason why a lot of kids play – the desire to belong, to be part of something. Maybe they can’t define it, or put it into words, but there it is. That’s what it was for me.
Today, I look at some of the drills players do (as we’ve already discussed, I don’t have to go too far) and I’m reminded how love of the game motivates these kids. They’re out there in weather like we had this week, and they’ll be out there two months from now in a cold, raw rain. They’ll play games in conditions that mask the color of their uniforms, perhaps because they’re covered in mud.
They learn valuable lessons, such as the realization that hard work has its rewards, and that sometimes, those rewards are not readily tangible. They’ve tried their best, and the other team was just better.
These are the tapes that start playing in my head when I am awoken by that first whistle of the season. That’ll happen Friday, and we’ll be off to the races.
