A rough road to a state title
At the time, Caleb Waddle thought it was a broken rib.
Then a fifth-grader, Waddle had taken a hit in football practice and complained to his parents of lingering pain. About a week later, they went to his pediatrician and, after taking X-rays, Waddle was left to wait for an hour before eventually heading to Arkansas Children’s Hospital.
After undergoing a biopsy and several tests, he was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 9 years old.
“That day, everything changed,” Waddle said. “I wasn’t in school anymore, wasn’t playing football.”
Seven years removed from his diagnosis, Waddle has returned to both school and football, as he was a part of a crucial unit for this year’s Class 7A state champion Bryant team, shoring up an experienced offensive line. And while Waddle got to finish his senior season of high school football on the field and hoisting up a trophy, that wasn’t the case in fifth grade. In fact, he missed his entire school year, undergoing several rounds of both chemotherapy and radiation.
“It came out of nowhere for him just like it did us,” said Carol Waddle, Caleb’s mother. “He thought he was hurt, and all of a sudden they’re telling him that he’s stage four and they’re having all these adult conversations over him, and he’s trying to pick up things here and there.
“The worst part of it, as a parent, is he finally asked me a couple of weeks into it if he was going to die. That’s not a question you ever want to have to answer for your child. But he had his highs and lows, and I’ll have to tell you that if it wasn’t for the kids maintaining contact with him, he would have really had a hard time.”
Caleb said that, as he got into treatment, the severity of his illness wasn’t something he thought much about, saying, “It was just, ‘You’re sick. You have to go do this and take these medicines, and you’ll be alright.’ ”
Both he and his mom highlighted the support he received from the Bryant community, and in particular, his peewee football team, which included several members of the Hornets’ 2021 titlewinning team, including starting quarterback Carson Burnett and fellow lineman Brooks Edmondson.
Soon after his diagnosis and a long hospital stay, Caleb said he remembers his teammates shaving their heads in support of him, and the entire team wore his No. 99 for the final couple games of his fifth-grade season. He also had a handful of teammates who’d come see him every week during his time in the hospital.
“It tightened [our friendships] a lot,” Caleb said. “We were friends at my worst and winning four state championships is a pretty high point in your life, and you’re still friends.”
AAA Taylor talks 8-man
When asked about the recent two-weekend state championship slate that took place, Arkansas Activities Association Executive Director Lance Taylor doesn’t automatically point to Bryant’s 7A fourpeat, or Harding Academy’s comeback win or Joe T. Robinson’s domination of Shiloh Christian for 4A title.
Instead, he goes right to the first game of this year’s slate — the first-ever 8-man football championship game between Strong-Huttig and Mountain Pine.
“Everybody I talked to, didn’t matter if they came and got to see it, and they’d never seen an 8-man football game,” Taylor said. “They liked it.”
The first title game was far from a whimper, as Strong came back from 18 points down in the final 10 minutes of regulation to eventually beat the Red Devils 66-60 in double overtime.
“As far as propaganda, media and advertising for 8-man, this was a hell of a game for everybody to recognize that 8-man is real football,” Strong Coach Sirl Wright said following the game. “A lot of people don’t think it’s real football, but it was a grind all the way to the end.”
After spending three seasons as a club sport in the eyes of the AAA, it was officially sanctioned this season.
CLASS 2A Postponement not ideal
While Lance Taylor said he thought the two weekends of championship football went well, he “hated” having to postpone the Class 2A championship game from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, he said.
The game, between the McCrory Jaguars and the Fordyce Redbugs, was postponed to Sunday due to storms near War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock 40 minutes after it was originally scheduled to kick off .
“That’s all we did for two days, was watch the weather,” Taylor said.
“It seemed like every weather channel was 15% to 50% [chance of storms]. Everybody was ‘It’s going to be scattered, it’s going to be this, it’s going to be that.’ I guess you just can’t predict the weather.”
Taylor did say the AAA works in part with a member of the National Weather Service, who’s staffed for all of the state title games, to determine weather-based decisions like the one that came up last Friday.
The postponement wasn’t the first time in title weekend history a Friday game has been moved to Sunday, either. In 2018, Pulaski Academy and Little Rock Christian Academy faced off on a Sunday, with the Warriors winning 52-38.