PARKLAND’S WIN IN HOME OPENER STIRS PRIDE
PARKLAND — Darned if it didn’t happen again. Willis May, football coach at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, has had this superstition for a number of years. At least he calls a superstition, even if others might think of it as a borderline obsession.
Whenever he finds a heads-up penny on game day, good things happen.
That’s why his old offensive line coach used to plant pennies for the boss just to simplify matters.
Call it a odd if you like, but Friday night, May wouldn’t hear any of it — not after his Eagles defeated South Broward 23-6 in their home opener.
“Yeah, 17, ain’t that something?” May said of the margin of victory.
Seventeen is a big number at Douglas High School. No, check that. It’s the most important number, because 17 souls were lost Feb. 14 in the shooting tragedy that rocked this school, this com- munity and this nation. In the countdown to kick-
May reached for a Gatorade ...
“... And there’s a penny, on heads, sitting right there where the Gatorade was,” May said. “Just sitting there. I don’t know about y’all but I believe in that stuff and
Aaron Feis knows I’d hunt the whole locker room to try to find a penny on heads.”
Feis was a Douglas High graduate and May’s offensive line coach who was killed in the rampage while saving the lives of students.
Try telling May that Feis isn’t still up his old tricks of planting pennies.
Pennies from heaven. “He’s making it pretty easy on me right now,”
said May, who also found a heads-up penny in his hotel room before last week’s season-opening victory in Geor- gia.
May obviously knows what his team is up against. How this football team can be a galvanizing force on a campus wrestling with how to start anew while never forgetting the 14 students and three faculty members killed. Pressure?
“Last week I just said, ‘Guys, we’ve got to play for ourself,’ ” May said. “I mean, we want to make them guys proud, but we’ve got to play for ourself.”
Otherwise, it’s overwhelming? “It’s overwhelming anyway,” May said.
“It’s been overwhelming from Day 1.” That’s probably why Douglas did everything it could to make the atmosphere inside the football stadium look like a regular game Friday. If you somehow wandered in without knowing of the tragedy, you never would have thought anything was amiss. There was no pregame tribute. No moment of silence. Just Friday night lights and two high school teams going at it.
“Tonight we were playing for us,” receiver/safety Chris- tian Higgins said.
“Everything else is about them, but tonight was for us.” Which doesn’t mean the 17 is ever far from their minds.
“It’s been hard,” Higgins said. “But we’ve just been mad. Mad, and taking it out on the field.” For awhile, it seemed the Eagles were going to win 17-0. That was the score before quarterback Ryan Kavanaugh scored on a 1-yard plunge in the third quarter to put the game away. have a bond tighter than anyone out here,” Kava- naugh said.
May and Feis had it, and the players all know it.
“He found a lucky penny and he truly believes Feis put it there,” Kavanaugh said. “We can feel them here. We know they’re here with us.” As if anyone needed reminding, May said as much in his postgame talk to his players.
“You’ve got 17 angels looking down on you,” he said.
With that, the players all gathered in close.
“One-two-three Feis up!” they yelled.
Two down, plenty more tests to go. Plenty more Friday nights to inch closer toward whatever measure of healing they can hope to attain.
“I’m so proud of them,” May said. “I’m happy for them. If any kids earned, or deserve, to be 2-0 at this point, I’ve got to say it’s my guys.
“They’ve been through hell.”