By Willis Webb
A lot of people would probably be surprised to learn that I played high school football.
Most folks don’t believe or even think that someone in a creative, “artsy” field such as writing would have ever been involved in a contact sport.
Tennis? Maybe. Ping pong (“table tennis”)? Probably. But, play football? Nah.
But, yes, I was involved and I’ve got the trophies to prove it. One you can see. The other you can’t.
Of course, that involves a story.
In a small town, just about every able-bodied boy in high school goes out for football. Well, except maybe the FFA guys. I mean, raising a “project” through vocational agriculture class — whether it’s chickens, a lamb, a hog or a steer or maybe you’re in the dairy livestock field — is tremendously time consuming. There are early-morning and late afternoon chores required of FFA student-members that make it almost mandatory to forego sports.
But, unless you’re FFA or physically challenged, you’re expected to “suit up” and give all for dear old alma mater.
Although my dad was a rancher, prompting the Vo-Ag teacher to lick his chops in anticipation of the offspring of a good rancher enrolling in ag classes, it wasn’t going to happen with me, nor my three younger brothers. Dad never showed any disappointment. He supported whatever we wanted to do in school and, I believe, he was pumped up about all of us knocking heads in football. Mother wasn’t.
People see 70ish me at 235 pounds and can visualize the football experience. Prior to my “aged growth years,” I usually weighed 170-175. As a teen in high school football, skinny me probably never tipped the scales at more than 150, although in my senior year I flirted with going over that mark. Out-of-town folks who knew me in those lightweight years were usually surprised that, at my weight, I played that contact sport.
Just out of high school, this then-skinny guy had a flattop haircut and some people said if I stood sideways and stuck out my tongue, I looked like a zipper.
Of course, there were the usual football bumps and bruises but that never raised much concern with me. One game night, though, I got home about midnight from an out-of-town contest, visibly banged up in what I knew was a temporary way but when Mother flipped on the porch light and answered the door, she shrieked at the sight of me … she thought the “boogeyman” had come to wreak havoc.
I limped because of a deep bruise in my left thigh. There was a knot on my left cheekbone; I’d been punched in the nose and mouth so they were swollen, red and had traces of blood. This was in a time before face masks were required.
When I threw a body block at someone, I almost always went at ’em with my left hip. You don’t see body blocks much anymore; coaches feel blocking can be more effective if you stay on your feet and shove-knock-bump the opponent all over the place. We were taught to “annihilate” them, knocking their feet from under them with the body block. Today’s mantra says if you keep your feet and knock your opponent down, go find another one.
While running with the ball and falling after a tackle, it seemed I invariably landed on my right knee (when I didn’t make a one-point landing on my head). No comments please.
I now have “trophies” from those bangs and knocks. One you can view, the other is not visible.
The aforementioned right knee on which I almost always landed is now bone-on-bone — no “padding” such as cartilage and there is some ligament damage.
The visible trophy is an adjustable height metal cane that I now walk around with. I can’t sneak up on anyone …. clink, clink, clink in a military-like cadence.
The “invisible” trophy nearly gets me arrested in airports. It’s a metal shaft in my left hip (body blocks, hah!) I even had to strip for one obnoxious guard before he believed I had a pseudo hip joint and accompanying metal shaft into the bone in my thigh.
Trophies! They’re not what they’re hyped to be.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher of more than 50 years experience.
