Emotional return for prep football
Players on field again after not playing in ’20
Brian Johnson stood along the fence line at Crump Stadium Friday night during the first halftime of a Melrose High School football game in almost two years and noticed a few offensive linemen sprawled on the turf.
“You’ve got a Melrose jersey on. You don’t lay down in the grass,” Johnson shouted across the track to them. He would know.
Johnson played on the 1997 Melrose team that won a state championship and then returned to his alma mater, where he still works as a behavioral specialist. He perhaps noticed more than anyone how the impending return of the high school football season helped change everyone’s demeanor in the hallways and classrooms in Orange Mound.
Students were happier, he noted. They were more prompt and responsive.
“Bringing back football brought a lot back to those kids. It changed a lot of our lives,” Johnson remarked. “It teaches you not to quit in other things. It taught us a lot.”
The final score felt like a secondary storyline this week as Shelby County Schools made its long-awaited return to the gridiron after last season got wiped out by COVID-19 protocols. It was a cause for celebration in the midst of a pandemic that’s raging as strong as ever because everybody knew this blissful tradition should never be taken for granted again.
From the parents, fans and students in the bleachers, to the aspiring musicians playing in the school band, to the players out on the field, a sense of gratitude permeated through every tackle and every touchdown and every song and every cheer.
Even if the reminders of the damage
inflicted by COVID-19, and the damage it’s still inflicting now that the delta variant is spreading so rapidly, were inescapable during and after White Station’s 17-8 win over Melrose.
White Station, for instance, had to pause preseason practice because of COVID-19 issues. Its band had to cut short camp for the same reason. There was no postgame handshake line and players weren’t permitted to greet their families afterwards, either. Even getting a ride home from parents was off limits for some reason as Shelby County Schools does whatever it can to keep this virus from overwhelming another school year.
Just across the street from Crump Stadium sits Methodist University Hospital, where the beds are being filled too quickly by COVID-19 patients once again.
White Station coach Reid Yarbrough said 90% of his team was playing their first varsity game because there was no season last year. Melrose coach Cedrick Wilson Sr., the former Tennessee Vols and NFL product, estimated 60% of his players had never played a snap before.
“It takes an emotional toll keeping everybody together, keeping everything together, and you don’t know what’s going to happen one month to the next,” Yarbrough said. “Especially with this spike in COVID, I told them before the game no more games beyond tonight were promised. The seniors last year got robbed, and I don’t want these seniors to get robbed.”
This, of course, is why it’s worth savoring all this. Already, several local games were canceled due to COVID-19 issues. But the risks of high school sports causing more COVID-19 outbreaks must also be weighed against the risks of what happens if high school sports aren’t played again, particularly in places like Orange Mound and throughout Shelby County
These games are more than games to a lot of people. It’s why Wilson, despite his decorated football career, always wanted to one day return to Melrose and coach the kids from the neighborhood he grew up in.
“Melrose football is the heartbeat of Orange Mound,” he said. “It’s a huge part of their life.”
“It gives the community hope,” added Derrick Carter, the father of Melrose junior quarterback Darryon Taylor. “Last year devastated a lot of kids.”
So let’s hope we get through this latest COVID-19 surge well enough this year to keep the games going.
Because when Taylor ran over a White Station defender to pull the Golden Wildcats to within 10-8 with 2:34 remaining, Crump Stadium shook on the visitor’s side, with generations of Melrose fans banding together once more to support their scrappy team.
And then, on the ensuing kickoff, White Station junior Ronquarius Lukes collected the ball, made one cut and switched fields. Suddenly, he was streaking past everyone with a convoy of blockers paving the way for the game-clinching, 60-yard touchdown.
The crowd roared and the brass of the band blared and an entire sideline of White Station teammates were sprinting right along with Lukes, a mixture of joy and relief overtaking whatever else was going on in the world for a moment.
“It was like God was right here walking with me while I had the ball in my hands,” Lukes said. “When I saw the end zone, my eyes were glowing. It was just a wonderful feeling.”
Amen to that.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@ gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto