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By Tim Wood
There's something about this time of year that drives people to unusual behavior. They congregate at large grass fields on Friday nights, and sometimes Tuesday and Thursday nights.
Normally calm people start clapping their hands and screaming their lungs out. Young men don uniforms, helmets and pads. They start running into each other. Men in black and white shirts blow whistles, throw yellow handkerchiefs into the air, and make funny hand signals.
At one end of the field, a large electronic device runs off the time and offers up numbers.
If aliens from another planet visited Earth and observed a high school football game, they might put their hyperdrive into reverse and head on to the next solar system. The love for football is one of those things you can't describe to anyone who isn't a true believer.
Daily Herald columnist Lewis Moore wrote beautifully in his recent column about a memorial placed at the football field where he played in high school.
My playing experience consisted of going out as a senior in high school. Our team had not won a game in three seasons, so I figured I couldn't hurt anything. I had run cross country for the past two seasons, but was getting bigger and slower. So, with my inestimable contributions, we extended the winless streak of Lebanon (Missouri) High School to four seasons.
The experience wasn't a loss, though. A story I wrote about the experience won first place in a school writing contest. I also have plenty of stories to tell my children, one of whom is getting his first taste of scholastic football this fall.
As a total football playing novice, I didn't get much varsity playing time. But the junior varsity was undermanned and needed a left offensive tackle.
One of those few varsity experiences came when our starting left tackle, an inexperienced but talented sophomore, had a problem with the snap count. Teams like to mix up the snap count. Otherwise, the defense will move on the quarterback's signal, rather than the snap of the ball.
But this young tackle just couldn't get the hang of going on the count of "two" instead of "one." Thus, we either had to go on "one," which meant the defense teed off on us, or we went on "two" and risked the young lineman jumping and causing yellow flags to rain down on the field.
In one game, the coaches decided they had had enough of this nonsense. The offensive line coach yelled out my name - "WOOD!" - and I ran down to the coach and wondered what I had done wrong.
"Wood! Get in there for Price. See if you can go on 2!"
As I arrived in the huddle, my teammates groaned when I arrived. We tried to run the play on two, but on the count of one, the other team crashed into us. The referees called the penalty and we gained five yards.
They left me in for one more play, after which the sufficiently humiliated lineman Price re-entered the game.
In one of the junior varsity games, I waged war against defensive lineman who would literally punch me in the stomach with his fist on every play. My coach didn't see this, but he did see that I wasn't blocking very well. Naturally, he chewed me out when I returned to the sideline.
"But coach," I said. "He's punching me in the stomach on every play!"
"Cut his knees out from under him," the coach said. That was dirty football, but I was desperate.
So, on the next series I aimed low for the knees. I never made it to his knees. His bare fist hit me square on the helmet. I didn't feel a thing. But he did.
He didn't throw any more punches. We won the game.
My junior varsity teammates moved on to the varsity next year and broke the losing streak. My high school alma mater has done much better since then. Amazingly, some things come full circle in unexpected ways. One of my son's coaches is from my old high school. He played when the 40-game losing streak was (hopefully) long forgotten.
But not forgotten are the lessons learned from an old blocking sled and a gruff, demanding offensive line coach.
Published in the Columbia Daily Herald Sept. 19, 1999.
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