The cooler temperatures from earlier in the week have gone away. Late summer continues to hold on as the first game of the 2009 Winder-Barrow High Scool football season finally arrives.
It’s 6:15 p.m., still more than an hour before kickoff. Players have yet to take the field for pre-game warmups. The stands on both sides of W. Clair Harris Stadium are empty.
Madison County, the opening opponent for the Bulldoggs, has struggled recently with a down 2008 and a loss to start 2009. Some of their “fans” can be seen grumbling on message boards, complaining about their head coach. These coaching experts trot out the same lines. The only problem: those doing so only know a tenth of what they think they know, if that.
Around 6:20 the first WBHS players take the field for pre-game warmups. After a long offseason, the first game of 2009 is within sight. There’s a sense of enthusiam around the program.
The rigid offseason program has Bulldogg coaches and players believing good things are ahead. Football season begins well in advance of Sept. 4 or whenever teams have their respective season openers. Ben Corley knows it. His coaching staff knows it. The players, if they didn’t already know it, have it drilled into their heads by now.
Early arriving fans begin taking their seats on the home side of the stadium. Smoke can be seen from the hot dogs and hamburgers being grilled for the concession stand.
At 6:25 I walk toward the endzone in front of the WBHS fieldhouse where Mike Maxey is standing. Maxey, who had given of his Friday nights for decades to the Bulldogg program, is equally excited about the new season.
“I believe we have a chance to win,” said the man who was inducted into the school’s athletic Hall of Fame last winter. “I just know the players have really worked hard. I want them to win and I want Coach Corley to do well. He deserves it because he has put so much into this program.”
Maxey soon has to depart as his pregame duties for the team await. The countdown clock to kickoff is now at an hour.
I speak briefly with Randy Blalock, who is part of the WBHS football broadcasts on WIMO radio. To me, high school football on the local radio station is as much a tradition as Friday Night Lights. Like me, Blalock understands how much work the players and coach put into each season. It’s truly so much more than many understand.
As the remainder of the Bulldogg players take the field for warmups, it’s clear they are relieved to finally have the new season within reach. A bye week to start the campaign no doubt has made them more anxious. Now less than an hour remains until the long-awaited kickoff arrives.
In the end, the WBHS team suffered a heartbreaking — gutwrenching would be a more accurate description — loss in the final minute. “Keep believing,” assistant coach Luther Price tells his players as they leave the field. “Keep believing.”
It’s an important message that the Bulldogg players will need to let sink in after such a disappointing ending to a game in which they played so well in many areas.
Something tells me they will “keep believing.”
Chris Bridges is sports editor of the Barrow Journal. You can reach him at cbridges@barrowjournal.com.
