Starting over

Parkland players kick off season with another step forward, toward healing.

PARKLAND — After two hours of catching passes, running plays and working their way through drills on a muggy South Florida night, they walked off the field, the first practice of a season finished.

One by one, as they left their stadium, members of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High football team grabbed the snacks and drinks that had been carefully laid out for them to enjoy post-practice.

There was something else , too — coolers filled with water balloons.

And once the Eagles got their hands on those, it took no time for a full-fledged water balloon fight to break out, players and the team’s student managers laughing as they pelted each other in a moment of levity.

“Kids,” Douglas coach Willis May smiled from a distance as he watched. “They’re having fun.”

The Douglas campus has known few moments like those since a Feb. 14 shooting left 17 students and teachers dead and another 17 wounded.

Among the fallen were assistant football coach Aaron Feis and athletic director Chris Hixon, both of whom have been hailed as heroes for protecting students during the rampage. As a coach and a school administrator, both had been part of previous “midnight madness” practices at Douglas and on this night, their absence was keenly felt.

Coaches wore shirts that bore their names and players walked past banners memorializing Feis and all the victims. The trek from

“We’re never going to forget. But, maybe, hopefully we can heal each other through the process of playing this game.” Willis May, Douglas head coach

JIM RASSOL/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Members of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High’s football team receive instructions from head coach Willis May at their midnight madness football practice to start their new season. It was the first regular season football practice since the shooting at the school on Feb. 14 that took 17 lives.