yearbook |

So for my junior year of high school I decided to join the Yearbook staff as a photographer (surprise, surprise 😉 ). It’s no secret that I’ve been, shall we say- absent, from this lovely blog for a while now, so if you’ve been wondering where I’ve been hiding out for the past few months– your best bet is either school, church, or football games.

Taking on the role of yearbook photographer hasn’t been a complete picnic, and I only say that because I honestly thought it would be..

Picture this- a 16 year old girl who has been to two, maybe three football games thus far in her high school experience is suddenly given a press pass and told to go down to the sidelines and take pictures.

It was an interesting season.

I’ve never been a football person. When we were younger, my dad would take me and my brothers to the Bandera football games on Friday nights. He tried to explain to me what all was happening on the field multiple times, but I was always happier running around with the other kids under the stands or embarrassing my older brother, who was in high school at the time, in front of his friends… I just couldn’t wrap my head around the concept of the game (and, as long as we’re being honest here, I still can’t.)

For each home game I would go down to the sidelines with my press pass (because I’m cool like that) and pretend like I knew what was going on, when in reality I just found a good spot where the other photographers were swarming and stayed there even after they had run off to follow the action, always watching the ball and focusing on whatever player had it. For the rest of the game. My philosophy? Eeeh.. They’ll be back to this side of the field soon anyways.

Ok, so maybe I didn’t stay there for the entire game, but I sure wasn’t going to spend all of my time running back and forth when I was already trying to focus on staying out of the way of the coaches while trying not to get trampled by the players on the sidelines, as well as keep from getting hit with the ball, plus turning from the field to the players on the sideline to the cheerleaders to the band to the crowd and back. There’s a lot more to capturing the spirit of a SV football game than one might think..

If there is one thing that I learned this season, it definitely wouldn’t be about the logistics of football, but about the players themselves. I think that it’s so easy to assume that football is just some mindless sport that doesn’t require much dedication, (please don’t shun me yet!), but if I ever felt that way before my boys in blue sure proved me wrong.

I went down to those sidelines week after week and watched those boys play with passion and determination to succeed not only in winning the game, but in truly becoming a team. I watched them share their victories together all season long as they saw their hard work paying off, and I watched them share their only defeat in the playoffs. I watched them as they jumped around like madmen and congratulated one another after each win, and I saw that they were truly there for one another when they lost. But most importantly, they showed me that football is more than just a game. Football is believing. Football is total commitment. Football is mud, sweat, and determination. Football is a brotherhood, both on and off the field. Football is everyone coming together to support their team. The band, the cheerleaders, the dancers, the trainers, the color guard, the parents; every one of us jumping up and down with excitement in rain or shine. And in the end, the same painful look of defeat reflected in each of our faces, mixed with the knowledge that their loss didn’t make them any less than the champions that we all know they are.

So while this season may not have taught me anything about how football is played, it sure did give me a new respect for the spirit of the game.

If you would have told me a few months ago that I’d end up spending my Friday nights trying not to get trampled by 200 lb. football players and actually loving it, I’d have said you were crazy. But there’s just something about the way that the players look out for each other that can make it all worth it.