Our first Texas HS football game

Friday night Michelle, Kyle, Karen, Howard, Nancy and I joined the the rest of the residence of the city of Wylie and attended Wylie HS's home football opener against Hebron HS.

Things sure are bigger in Texas. The first thing that hit us the first time we drove onto campus is the towering press box that overlooks the artificial turf athletic field and the 10,000 seats of "Pirate Stadium". The concourse under seats of each side of the stadium contains the athletic offices, concession stands, restrooms as well as a shop where you can buy Wylie fan-wear and periphanailia including giant foam fingers ( I gotta get me one of those). The fans standing in the secession lines can watch the action on the field on the closed circuit TV network so they don't miss a minute of action.

When we entered the stadium we realized there were no metal detectors, no police searching bags. We presented our tickets and walked right in. When we walked through the concourse and entered the stadium we found our path was blocked to the good seats by the Wylie HS ROTC students. The center section of seats, the comfy molded plastic seats, are reserved for those willing to pay the big bucks; As was a large section of parking spots right outside the stadium. The general admission seats however were not too shabby. The seats we occupied had backs and plenty of leg room.

In the endzone were two blow up tunnels that the players run through to make their entrance. The visiting team had a giant blowup football helmet attached to their tunnel. Right before the teams took the field the precision drill teams from each respective school marched out to a whistle cadence and formed a path for players to run out through to their respective benches as the bands simultaneously played their respective fight songs.

Once the players were on the field, the PA announcer asked the crowd to stand as the band from each prospective school plays their "school song". Not the fight song mind you, some other song. Hebron's band played first then Wylie's band. But when "That Wylie Band" played, not only was a large portion of the home crowd singing the song they also did this pointing hand motion; And it was not just the students. The adults were into it as much, if not more than the students. After that THEN the national anthem was performed. There was a real display of school and community pride that I had not witnessed before. Definitely not in North Carolina. I thought it a bit hokey at first but grew to appreciate the significance of what I was seeing.

At half time both bands performed as well as both school's drill teams. All the performances were impressive. The bands were bigger and as a result had perhaps a bigger more balance sound than Jordan but overall I don't think either band was that much better, overall, than what Jordan HS is use to seeing in competition. I did find it interesting that the halftime was extended by 15 minutes to allow time for all the performances. If that where Durham. The football team would have run onto the field and started warming up regardless if the band on the field or not.

The Pirates put up a good fight but at the end of the games fell short for the second week in a row but the game was quite exciting, as far as football goes. Both sides played very hard without a hint of poor sportsmanship.

The whole evening was a nice positive family and community centered event. At least it was until l we got to our car. Just as we reached the Volvo a group of apparent students came running through and a ruckus broke out right behind our car. I never felt we were in any danger and other than one of the kids bumping into Michelle on the way to the incident no harm was done. School staff and security folks were on the scene very quickly and broke things up but not before the whole small town storybook experience I had up to that point was burst.

I am looking forward to attending the next home football game.