A lot of people, my kids included, don’t know that football was my first love. When I was far too young to deal with such strong emotions, I fell hard for the Minnesota Vikings. Fran Tarkenton and Bud Grant were, in my opinion, the flower of manly perfection, dwarfed only by the sheer beauty of John Gilliam. Yowza.
Well, as every sports fan knows, the Vikings of the 1970s existed for no other reason than to teach the lessons of heartbreak and devastation to little girls like me.
I avoid football not because I hate it but because Rod Stewart knew what he was talking about when he wrote The First Cut is the Deepest. Some wounds stay fresh, even under decade’s worth of scar tissue.
I will never emotionally invest in a team again but that doesn’t mean I can’t root for my nephews when they play and this year, with two of them having sterling seasons, has been a ton of fun.
The Prep Bowl was this weekend and I was there both days, cheering on my nephews’ teams.
Friday night was the 6A championship between the big schools. Osseo vs East Ridge. I rode down to the stadium with Tyler.
We were not impressed with the logistical organization of the event. They could have had every ticket window open and dealt with the crowds in a timely manner but only six or seven of the 16 or so ticket windows were open so the lines to buy tickets were several hundred people long. Did they not expect an enormous crowd? It was only the championship game between some of the largest schools in the state.
We missed kick off but who did we run into the moment we stepped inside? Mom, Dad, Andy and his boys. Osseo (our team) scored before we got to our seats.
We found Bill and Jen (Holden’s parents) sitting at the 50 yard line with a large crowd of Oriole faithful, with plenty of saved seats for all the family members who had shown up to support the team. We didn’t stay there too long; everyone was standing and my tiny mother couldn’t see over them.
Grandma Punkin is, to the agreement of everyone who has ever met her, the most wonderful, delightful woman in the entire world. If she isn’t a Saint, there is no such thing.
You do not want to obstruct her sight lines when she’s watching football.
She will tear your head off and drop kick it into next month.
Dad, Andy, Ty and I hustled her off to a less crowded section of the bleachers before she actually picked a fight with anyone. It was much better; we could see everything and
the closest my Mom came to punching anyone was me, when I suggested to my 88 year old Dad that climbing over his seat back was a very bad idea.
East Ridge, a very good, strong, well-disciplined team, came back and took the lead from Osseo.
With less than five minutes left in the game and down by six, Osseo marched down the field. It was a nerve wracking grind but they won first down after first down until they found themselves within a yard of the goal line and mere seconds left on the game clock.
The pushed the ball across the line and scored. With no time left, they kicked the extra point and entered the record book as the 2015 6A Prep Bowl Champions.
Nothin’ like a nail biter that ends with your team on top!
It was WONDERFUL.
After the initial exuberance, the awarding of trophies, etc. the team bus was met back at the gym by hundreds of parents, students and fans and an enormous party ensued. I have no idea what time Bill, Jen and Holden finally got home.
CONGRATULATIONS, OSSEO!
Saturday could have passed for a lovely day in early October; clear blue skies, temps near sixty and what little breeze there was warm and dry. In other words; perfect football weather. The final game of year was Prep Bowl 5A: St. Thomas Academy vs St. Michael’s Albertville.
A whole mess of us returned to the bank, having swapped out our Osseo orange for Cadet Blue. Since it was an afternoon instead of a night game, Ty brought the kids. They had a ball.
The two teams were evenly matched and traded touchdowns in the first half. My nephew Woody is fun to watch, as he’s a receiver and gets to carry the ball a lot.
Things looked bleak in the second half. Things that had worked all season went just slightly off kilter; passes were caught just out of bounds or bounced off finger tips.
Then, with five minutes left in the game, Woody caught one in the end zone with his toes just inside the boundary and after the extra point, all we needed was one more great march.
After the miracle of the night before, it didn’t seem too much to hope for. After the win that put the Cadets in the championship, where they beat Moorhead with 23 seconds left in the game, it felt like the game was just within reach…
Alas, it was not to be.
SMA hung on long enough to deny the Cadets the crown.
So we came out of our Prep Bowl weekend with one State Champion and one runner up.
Babalouie sang a song he made up on the way home. The only word in it was ‘football’.
I still can’t get over the fact that both our teams made it to the Prep bowl at all.
What a great season!
We’ll never see another one like it.