STATE CHAMPS!
I am writing this five days after the Blue Cross Bowl in Cookeville, Tennessee. It was the final chapter in one of the most remarkable runs you’ll ever see by a high school football team.
The high school football team comes from Friendship Christian School in Lebanon, Tennessee. That’s where my son goes to school. He’s in the 8th grade. We’ve been there 7 years. We’ve been treated to some really good football over the years. Since we’ve been there, the worst regular-season record we’ve ever posted is 7-3. They’ve always made the playoffs. They’ve always won at least one playoff game.
Back in 2006, our second year at FCS, our team went 10-0, and breezed through the playoffs all the way to the championship game. (That year it was held at MTSU in Murfreesboro.) We threw 6 interceptions and lost to Jackson Christian School 19-13 to finish 14-1. It was painful to lose that game. I don’t think we had fully gotten over that, even five years later. The silver ball is nice, but it’s a far cry from a gold ball.
During the ensuing four years, the script was always the same. Make the playoffs. Win the first playoff game at home. Lose the second game on the road. And we’ve had some really good teams and stud players come through high school during that time.
When we lost the Blue Cross Bowl back in 2006, I figured, eh, we’ll be back. But I was now beginning to doubt we ever would.
Something happened this year that I never remotely expected, something almost other-worldly that I, as an observer, still can’t fully explain. I jumped on the ride, like I always do, just to see where it would go. This time, that ride went all the way.
August 19, 2011: Opening night at Pirtle Field went really well for 46 minutes. Hosting Donelson Christian Academy, the Friendship Christian Commanders had opened up a two-touchdown lead with two minutes to play. Then the wheels came off. DCA scored a touchdown, recovered an onside kick, scored another touchdown, intercepted a pass, scored yet another touchdown, intercepted another pass, and ran out the clock. It was a shocking sequence of events. DCA 28, FCS 20.
August 26, 2011: Friendship Christian traveled to White House Heritage for a game I did not attend. FCS methodically pulled out a ho-hum 21-7 victory to even our record at 1-1.
September 2, 2011: Back at Pirtle Field, Gordonsville, a local 1A football powerhouse, dropped FCS to 1-2 with a 26-20 victory. It was a very winnable game for the Commanders, except we didn’t win. Now, we were in a situation where we needed to win 6 of our last 7 games to assure ourselves a playoff berth, and we still had Trousdale County left on the schedule. You can get into the playoffs at 6-4, but our region is so tough that going 6-4 is really living on the edge. It’s imperative to get that 7th win. At this point, though, the playoffs seemed about as far away as Mars. My good friend Doyle, who always sits with me at football games, and I were faced with the prospect of perhaps not making the playoffs for the first time since our kids started going there.
September 9, 2011: Friendship Christian traveled to Clay County. I did not go. It’s a long way to Celina, and I figured we’d blow them out like always. And we did, 55-6. We evened our record at 2-2.
September 16, 2011: Friendship Christian on the road again, this time to Jackson County. Again, I did not travel, for the same reasons as the week before. Gainesville isn’t a great deal closer than Celina. The Commanders were predictably easy winners, 45-0. Halfway through the season, and we were just now above .500 for the first time. Still a long way to go for the Commanders.
September 23, 2011: Pickett County made the long drive to Lebanon as FCS returned home. No offense to Pickett County, but they are quite possibly the worst football team in the state of Tennessee. They are a relatively new program with very few players. Honestly, it’s embarrassing to watch, even from the winner’s angle. The Commanders won 55-0, and that was only because we took our foot off the gas early. Now we were 4-2, but looming next was…
September 29, 2011: Some people call it the Creekbank. I call it the House of Pain. Hartsville, Tennessee. Trousdale County Yellow Jackets. These are our rivals. More like bitter enemies. We hate them, and I think they hate us more than we hate them. Trousdale County is a tiny place, and when we play, literally half the town of Hartsville squeezes into that football stadium. They’ve won 9 state championships, as they so often remind us. We came into this game 4-19 all-time against Trousdale County, with exactly one win to our credit in their house. This game was televised on My30 TV Thursday Night Lights. In a nutshell, the score was tied 0-0 at halftime. But Trousdale County had controlled the ball for long stretches of time, and by the time the second half rolled around, our defense was tired, and, just as we had all feared, the Yellow Jackets won 17-0. This was accompanied, as always, by the glee and pandemonium you would expect from a blood-thirsty crowd of rabble at a gladiator bout in the Roman Colosseum. Yeah, Trousdale, you won again. Sheesh. Now I hated them even more.
So now the Commanders were 4-3, needing to win every one of it’s remaining games. The season was hanging in the balance. It was at this point that things changed dramatically for Friendship Christian.
October 7, 2011: Watertown came to Pirtle Field sporting a nifty 6-0 record. I was worried about this game, because Watertown could have effectively ended our season. Instead, the Commanders, still smarting from being shutout at the House of Pain on TV eight days before, chased the visitors halfway back to Watertown in beating them 54-14. We were 5-3.
October 21, 2011: Homecoming night at FCS as Red Boiling Springs came to town. It wasn’t much of a game. With RBS, it never is. The Commanders won easily, 63-6. I have no idea how RBS got those 6 points, either. The Commanders were now 6-3 with one game left.
October 28, 2011: Last game of the regular season at Monterey. I’ve never seen a game at Monterey, and did not make the trip this time, either. I expected us to be an easy winner. By now, Doyle’s boy, who played for the middle school team, was among a handful of eighth-graders who got called up to the high school team to finish out the year. It was a cold, drizzly night. Doyle, who made the trip, sent me texts from Monterey, and honestly thought it was going to snow. Friendship Christian won 58-7 to finish the regular season 7-3.
November 4, 2011: Here we were back at Pirtle Field for our first playoff game. We played host to Jackson County, and were expecting to be an easy winner. Being a playoff game, the game was surprisingly sparsely attended. The home bleachers were only half-full. At halftime, though, we only led 7-0, and I was a little worried. But not for long. The Commanders unloaded on Jackson County in the second half, and we ended up winning 42-0.
The second half became so non-eventful that Doyle and I were left talking about other things.
Karl: I hear we got two new middle school baseball coaches for the spring. Mmmm-hmmm.
Doyle: Yeah. They’re gonna be pretty good. Looking forward to this.
Doyle is from Cosby, way over in the east. That’s the moonshine part of the state. (Some people call it moonshine. I call it corn liquor.) He says they always look forward to the corn harvest this time of year. He’s a CPA, but you would never know it just by talking to him. He’s as country and low-key as they come. He went to UT. I went to Memphis. But we both hate Kentucky. We’ve had a really good time going to high school football games over the years. But, unbeknownst to us at the time, the real fun was just beginning.
We had won our first playoff game, but our season was about to end at…
November 11, 2011: The House of Pain. Hartsville, Tennessee. Trousdale County was ranked #1 in the state. They were 9-1, with their only loss coming to some team up in Kentucky. They were undefeated against Tennessee teams. I hate going there, but that’s where the playoff bracket had us going, so I figured I’d make the 50-minute drive, sit with Doyle, support our boys, represent our school, and go down with the ship. There was a full moon that night.
We won 24-14.
November 18, 2011: Okay, so our season didn’t end the Friday before, but dare we start dreaming about a state championship? We had taken out the #1 team in the state, but the task was only slightly easier, because now we had to travel to Chattanooga and face the #2 team in the state, Boyd-Buchanan.
It was a cold night, and I was wrapped up like an Eskimo. The Boyd-Buchanan boys were a bit bigger than ours, and I wasn’t feeling really confident. We raced out to a 14-6 lead, and had things going our way for the first quarter-and-a-half. In the second half, though, our offense sputtered, producing exactly one first down, and Boyd-Buchanan used a touchdown and two-point conversion to ultimately send the game to overtime.
FCS won the toss, and deferred to Boyd-Buchanan. It was the first overtime game I had ever seen at FCS. The home team set up on the 10-yard line and scored in two plays. However, our defense blocked the extra point.
The Commanders took over, but could only gain 4 yards in three plays. That set up 4th-and-goal at the 6-yard line. This was it. The entire season for both teams came down to one play. Whatever play we drew up quickly broke down, and our quarterback was left scrambling in the backfield. Suddenly, he found a tiny opening and raced toward the end zone, making a desperate dive for the left pylon. There was an official standing right there on the goal line. He signaled a touchdown. The visiting crowd went nuts. I remember thinking, “Wow, he must have just barely gotten in.” I thought his knees had touched the ground before the ball broke the plane, but then, I was at an angle. We made the extra point and won the game 21-20 to advance to the semifinals.
On the way out, I was mildly accosted by a Boyd-Buchanan fan who asked me if I thought he was in. I told him I thought he was, but then I was at an angle and couldn’t really tell. Truth is, I didn’t know if he scored or not, but the Boyd-Buchanan folks weren’t too happy right then, and I, wearing FC gear, wanted to make it out of Chattanooga as fast as I could. I wasn’t up for conversation at that point.
It wasn’t until I got home and checked the message board that I realized the full magnitude of the controversy. The Boyd-Buchanan fans were apoplectic. They were mad at the officials, of course, they were mad at the TSSAA, and they were mad at us. In all honesty, the entire officiating crew was lethargic. It was the only football game, at any level, that I have ever seen in which no penalty flags were thrown. Not a single one. I probably would have been mad, too.
Was FCS “given the game?” Let me put it this way: we had a close, make-or-break call at the end of a quarterfinal game go our way. Would a replay have overturned it? Quite possibly. But the only thing that matters is the scoreboard said Visitor 21, Home 20, and we were in the semifinals.
It was the day after my 42nd birthday.
November 25, 2011: Oliver Springs, Tennessee. Where is Oliver Springs? In the proverbial middle-of-nowhere. I had never heard of Oliver Springs until about two weeks before when I started looking ahead in the brackets. It’s in Roane County. You take Interstate 40 to exit 347 (Harriman), and stay on Highway 61. It’s about 18 miles from the interstate to Oliver Springs. Along the way, you drive past Taylor’s, the local speakeasy, which was packed when I drove past the first time, and still packed when I drove past on the way home.
Oliver Springs
Oliver Springs is a small town that reminds me of some of the places where I grew up in West Tennessee. Overall, they’re nice folks. Good country people. But I have no idea how their football team made it to the semifinals. We scored early and scored often, and won the game 39-6, and those 6 points came inside the last minute of the game, long after the outcome had been decided.
Doyle and I enjoyed the smell of hickory smoke that night. As you can see from the photograph, there is a tree and a chain-link fence just a few feet beyond the left back corner of the far end zone. There’s an old, two-story white house that reminds me of one of the parsonages I lived in as a child. They had a nice campfire going where they were roasting wieners. Well, some folks call them wieners, some call them hot dogs, but I prefer the more proper frankfurters.
Anyway, as I was leaving, the PA guy announced the final score as “Private School 39, Public School 6.” I don’t think it was meant as a compliment. But I didn’t let it bother me. People like to knock on private schools. They call us “sweatervests” and think the students are all spoiled rich kids. Well, some of them come from wealthy families. The majority don’t. But people can say and believe whatever they want. My wife and I have our son enrolled in the best school that’s available to us, and that’s all that matters.
At any rate, I was anxious to get to my car and leave the place. We had been made aware that several visiting cars had been broken into the week before. I had parked right under a streetlight, so I wasn’t too worried, but I still wanted to get out of there quickly.
Well, here we were, the Friendship Christian Commanders, with a second opportunity to win a state football championship. We had failed at the first opportunity. Would we succeed this time? If we lost, would we ever make it back again? Indeed, the older I get, the more I appreciate the difficulty in winning championships, the difficulty in even getting that far in the first place. It is just so hard to do.
We had eight days to think about it.
December 3, 2011: Campus of Tennessee Tech University, Cookeville, Tennessee, host site of the Blue Cross Bowl. Our game was at noon that Saturday. Our opponent was Dresden. I was excited the entire week leading up to the state championship. Yet I also had this strange sense of peace and calm about the game. I wasn’t really nervous until that morning. In fact, the butterflies were so thick I couldn’t even eat. I just wasn’t hungry.
My son and I drove up that morning. It’s just over an hour from Mt. Juliet. It was the shortest drive we’d had since the Trousdale County game. The place was packed with both Friendship Christian and Dresden fans. The FCS contingent was the largest I have ever seen. The sweatervests were there en masse.
It was a cloudy day, but the clouds were thin enough so that there was still plenty of sunshine. It was chilly, though, with a strong breeze blowing from south to north, or from right to left across the football field from our vantage point.
FCS won the toss and kicked off with the wind behind us. Dresden went three-and-out, punted, and the Commanders scored on their first possession. It was 13-0 after the first quarter. It was 13-0 after the second quarter. It was also 13-0 after the third quarter. I was relaxed to the point that I got a frankfurter at halftime. My appetite was back, but the game still wasn’t over. We still needed one more score to more or less ice the game.
After a head-scratching fake punt deep in their own territory on about 4th-and-23, we got that third touchdown to go ahead 20-0. Dresden had had a terrible game up to that point, but it was about to go from bad to worse. A blocked punt, again deep in Dresden’s territory, set us up to increase the lead to 27-0. We got the ball back again after another punt, and that’s when things got ugly. Dresden picked up a facemask penalty and a personal foul on back-to-back plays, and, for good measure, we pushed across one more touchdown with about 2 minutes remaining to post a 34-0 lead. We dominated Dresden every way that you can dominate a football team. The only thing they did better was turn the ball over.
(Read the game article here.)
I really cannot describe the joy I felt in winning this. I wanted it for the players, the coaches, and, most of all, for the school. This was not only the first state football championship in school history, but also in Wilson County history. I have never experienced a football championship. My high school never one won. My alma mater, the University of Memphis, has never won one, and never will. My favorite NFL team, the Tennessee Titans, have never won one. For me, this was uncharted water.
The thing about championships is that they are forever. No one can take it away from you. It will be there long after Doyle and I and our boys are gone. We might be back next year, or we might never get there again. Being simply good, or even great, usually isn’t good enough. You have to have a lot of things go your way to win a championship.
I had nothing to do with this accomplishment. Unlike Doyle, my son doesn’t play football. I didn’t have a player dressed out. I’m not a coach. I never drove the bus. I never washed dirty uniforms. I’m just a parent who has a child at Friendship Christian School and likes to go to football games. I’m sure that those who actually had a hand in the gold ball are even more joyful than I am.
Gold Ball
