Friday Night Lights
On Friday, I will be attending a high school football game. I can't remember the last time I've been to one. Probably 15 years, which coincides with the last time I was in high school.
My school, like every single other high school in Texas, takes football very, very seriously. My school, unlike most high schools in Texas, is a private non-denominational school. My graduating class had 102 people in it, the upper school had about 500, the entire twelve grades, maybe 1000, but that's pushing it. If you've ever seen Rushmore, you've seen my high school. But every Friday, the bleachers around the football field would be packed and everyone in the upper and middle schools would show up to watch the Rebels (a possibly politically incorrect name since changed to the Mavericks) play some other private school from the area, though we occassionally made it up to Dallas and even Oklahoma, since there aren't that many schools like ours.
Our big game is against Kinkaid, our rival school. That's who we will be playing on Friday. While the rest of the season matters, the Kinkaid game is the only one that anyone will remember. It's as close to a homecoming as we have, but the game is played every year in neutral turf: Rice Stadium. Kinkaid, like St. John's, is a twelve year elite preparatory school. St. John's is in River Oaks and Kinkaid is in Memorial. We like to think of oursevles as better than Kinkaid, because we are. The Kinkaid game is the last game of the season, and even if the rest of the season is undefeated, the season cannot be considered a success if we haven't won the Kinkaid game.
Kinkaid week is important for a St. John's kid. Every day of the week leading up to the game is dedicated somehow to getting ready for it. There's Kinkaid day, where all of the seniors dress up like the snobby kids from Kinkaid. (The social dynamics are sort of hard to explain. We liked to think of ourselves as the smart rich kids (which we were), and we liked to them as not as smart rich kids (which they were). Dressing up like our caricature version of a Kinkaid kid involved a lot of snooty preppy wear and a lot of make up.) There's some day whose name I can't remember where all the guys show up in cammo. (Needless to say, we were all in plaid and/or kakhi uniform under normal circumstances). There are numerous pranks played on the other school (the most memorable of which simply involved a U-lock in the middle of the night on the front gate of Kinkaid's grounds). Everyone's car windows were decorated with white shoe polish declaring school allegiance, the inevitable defeat of the enemy, and possibly, that the driver of the vehicle is a sexy senior with arrows pointing in the appropriate direction.
And there was Red and Black Day on Friday, where the whole school, from the prekindergardeners to the Seniors wore red and black in support of the team. On Red and Black Day, the whole school attends the massive pep rally at the football field that seems to go on for hours. The drum corps and the cheerleaders and the football players and the junior varsity football players and junior varsity cheerleaders and middle school football players and middle school cheerleaders and everyone rallied and cheered and hit a purple and yellow falcon pinata (our colors are so much cooler than theirs). Sometimes the cheerleaders would show up piled in someone's convertable. One time some were on horseback. I have heard, but I have not had confirmation, that they once arrived in a helicopter. If I had been more aware of events outside my own circle of friends, I would have seen that the itty bitty kids from the Lower School were terribly, terribly excited to be there. The bleachers look really cool, because they're arranged by class, so the little tiny ones are all the way to the right, and the size of the kids grows as you walk towards the left. It's the only event of the year that the entire school participates in. Most of the time the students of the Upper School, the Middle School and the Lower School don't even see each other.
When I was in high school, the Rice Stadium parking lot used to be a study in the Chevy Suburban. There was one suburban for every other upscale vehicle in the parking lot. It was a practical car for someone with kids back then, and a lot of families that went to either school, like mine, had property in the country that made the vehicle that much more practical. I suspect that the Excursion, Expedition, Tahoe, and the Lincoln and Cadillac versions of the same have taken some of the Suburban's dominance away. The tail gating is pretty hysterical, since the parents go to Whole Foods and Central Market or Eatzi's or get some sort of upscale picnic catered from a restaurant, and there's a lot of cheeses and baguettes and olives and cured meats eaten ahead of time. A lot of wine is drunk in that parking lot before the game starts. There are a few alumni tents set up (where I will be prepartying on Friday night) for alumni, complete with some sort of barbeque (this year, Demeris will be catering) and (thankfully) beer.
About fifteen to twenty thousand people show up for the game between two schools with maybe a thousand students combined in the Upper Schools. The little kids and their parents show up. Alumni like me show up. Everyone in the Upper and Middle Schools and their parents show up. Grandparents. Aunts, uncles, cousins. It is the big game. The players burst through the banners and the game starts and everyone is terribly excited about it. The Rice Stadium is massive. It holds about 80,000 people, and the two schools do a fair job of filling the areas from maybe between the two 30 yard lines in the lower decks. The game is generally a good one, because (I assume) it's important to everyone in the stadium. After the game is over, everyone from the winning side floods down to get on the field and congratulate the players. And then we head to the after-parties.
I am proud to say in my year, we won the Kinkaid game (we won almost every other game that season, we had a very good team). That meant that the next Monday, Seniors got to skip class without worry. And of course, bragging rights.
My school, like every single other high school in Texas, takes football very, very seriously. My school, unlike most high schools in Texas, is a private non-denominational school. My graduating class had 102 people in it, the upper school had about 500, the entire twelve grades, maybe 1000, but that's pushing it. If you've ever seen Rushmore, you've seen my high school. But every Friday, the bleachers around the football field would be packed and everyone in the upper and middle schools would show up to watch the Rebels (a possibly politically incorrect name since changed to the Mavericks) play some other private school from the area, though we occassionally made it up to Dallas and even Oklahoma, since there aren't that many schools like ours.
Our big game is against Kinkaid, our rival school. That's who we will be playing on Friday. While the rest of the season matters, the Kinkaid game is the only one that anyone will remember. It's as close to a homecoming as we have, but the game is played every year in neutral turf: Rice Stadium. Kinkaid, like St. John's, is a twelve year elite preparatory school. St. John's is in River Oaks and Kinkaid is in Memorial. We like to think of oursevles as better than Kinkaid, because we are. The Kinkaid game is the last game of the season, and even if the rest of the season is undefeated, the season cannot be considered a success if we haven't won the Kinkaid game.
Kinkaid week is important for a St. John's kid. Every day of the week leading up to the game is dedicated somehow to getting ready for it. There's Kinkaid day, where all of the seniors dress up like the snobby kids from Kinkaid. (The social dynamics are sort of hard to explain. We liked to think of ourselves as the smart rich kids (which we were), and we liked to them as not as smart rich kids (which they were). Dressing up like our caricature version of a Kinkaid kid involved a lot of snooty preppy wear and a lot of make up.) There's some day whose name I can't remember where all the guys show up in cammo. (Needless to say, we were all in plaid and/or kakhi uniform under normal circumstances). There are numerous pranks played on the other school (the most memorable of which simply involved a U-lock in the middle of the night on the front gate of Kinkaid's grounds). Everyone's car windows were decorated with white shoe polish declaring school allegiance, the inevitable defeat of the enemy, and possibly, that the driver of the vehicle is a sexy senior with arrows pointing in the appropriate direction.
And there was Red and Black Day on Friday, where the whole school, from the prekindergardeners to the Seniors wore red and black in support of the team. On Red and Black Day, the whole school attends the massive pep rally at the football field that seems to go on for hours. The drum corps and the cheerleaders and the football players and the junior varsity football players and junior varsity cheerleaders and middle school football players and middle school cheerleaders and everyone rallied and cheered and hit a purple and yellow falcon pinata (our colors are so much cooler than theirs). Sometimes the cheerleaders would show up piled in someone's convertable. One time some were on horseback. I have heard, but I have not had confirmation, that they once arrived in a helicopter. If I had been more aware of events outside my own circle of friends, I would have seen that the itty bitty kids from the Lower School were terribly, terribly excited to be there. The bleachers look really cool, because they're arranged by class, so the little tiny ones are all the way to the right, and the size of the kids grows as you walk towards the left. It's the only event of the year that the entire school participates in. Most of the time the students of the Upper School, the Middle School and the Lower School don't even see each other.
When I was in high school, the Rice Stadium parking lot used to be a study in the Chevy Suburban. There was one suburban for every other upscale vehicle in the parking lot. It was a practical car for someone with kids back then, and a lot of families that went to either school, like mine, had property in the country that made the vehicle that much more practical. I suspect that the Excursion, Expedition, Tahoe, and the Lincoln and Cadillac versions of the same have taken some of the Suburban's dominance away. The tail gating is pretty hysterical, since the parents go to Whole Foods and Central Market or Eatzi's or get some sort of upscale picnic catered from a restaurant, and there's a lot of cheeses and baguettes and olives and cured meats eaten ahead of time. A lot of wine is drunk in that parking lot before the game starts. There are a few alumni tents set up (where I will be prepartying on Friday night) for alumni, complete with some sort of barbeque (this year, Demeris will be catering) and (thankfully) beer.
About fifteen to twenty thousand people show up for the game between two schools with maybe a thousand students combined in the Upper Schools. The little kids and their parents show up. Alumni like me show up. Everyone in the Upper and Middle Schools and their parents show up. Grandparents. Aunts, uncles, cousins. It is the big game. The players burst through the banners and the game starts and everyone is terribly excited about it. The Rice Stadium is massive. It holds about 80,000 people, and the two schools do a fair job of filling the areas from maybe between the two 30 yard lines in the lower decks. The game is generally a good one, because (I assume) it's important to everyone in the stadium. After the game is over, everyone from the winning side floods down to get on the field and congratulate the players. And then we head to the after-parties.
I am proud to say in my year, we won the Kinkaid game (we won almost every other game that season, we had a very good team). That meant that the next Monday, Seniors got to skip class without worry. And of course, bragging rights.