It’s the unofficial end of summer
- col-teri-stein
- August 28, 2023
- 889
Here is a confession for you: I am 66 years old, and the words “back to school” still strike fear in my heart. It’s the unofficial end of summer and seems to have been starting earlier and earlier every year.
This has to be affecting the tourism industry. Families have two less weeks to vacation. Children don’t get to enjoy the full sunshiny glory that is August. The students are dragging themselves back to school in the dog days of the year.
My grandmother was a school teacher. She always said it was never productive to have children go back to school before Labor Day or attend school past Memorial Day.
If there is one saving grace of the earlier school year though, it is high school football. There is so much to love about it.
I thought back to my high school days. The thing I enjoyed most about high school was Pep Club. As a member of the Pep Club, we made decorations for the football team members’ lockers and placed other decorations around the school.
Our main purpose was to attend the games and scream at the top of our lungs. That was fun. We Pep Club members stood the entire game, following the instructions of the cheerleaders, jumping up and down, and going into arm-flailing spasms of joy when our team made a good play or scored.
We all had on our team colors, our high school jackets and, after junior year, our class rings. I still have my school jacket and my class ring, and they still fit, although the jacket may have shrunk slightly.
Early on Mom picked me up from games, and later I drove myself. Being a member of Pep Club was such an emotional high Mom said she never knew if our team won or lost when she saw me because I’d be crying either way from joy or sadness.
Usually, it was joy. Our team was very good. I cut out the newspaper clippings and taped them to my bedroom door after every game.
I recently attended a football game at a school where my nephew is on the coaching team, and it was a blast. It didn’t hurt that they won too.
Before we left, I was thinking back to my Pep Club days and rooted through the closet to come up with an outfit in the home team’s school colors. If you are going to go to a game, it’s good to get in the spirit. You are automatically part of something good if you are among those wearing the school colors.
The best thing about football games is the pageantry, the excitement and the concession stand. You can’t beat it — enjoying the great outdoors while munching on sandwiches and drinks that benefit whatever school activity group is operating the concession stand.
The big moments are the ones etched in your mind, moments that happen year after year, team after team and game after game. The cheerleaders and band line up on the field as the players run out to a huge cheer from the crowd.
I remember Pep Club when we all lined up on the field at the beginning of the game and ran out on the field at the end to celebrate with the team.
At football games there is not one marching band but two marching bands to add to the atmosphere of each game. They play to get their team excited or when their team scores, and those halftime shows are wonderful. We found ourselves clapping along to the tunes of both bands as the game progressed.
Bands aren’t something you see every day. I remember looking through the history books when it seemed every little town had its own band in the early 1900s. It was before television when people needed more to do.
You just can’t beat a marching band and football. More football games are on my schedule for this fall, and I’ll also attend one other fall sporting event — cross country. If only they could get a marching band to show up for meets.