Taking Flight: The ups and downs of Friday Night Lights

This is one of three columns submitted that took third place for column writing in the 2011 Minnesota Associated Press Sports Association Awards for dailies under 20,000.

One of my favorite things in life is walking up to a high school football game.

One of my least favorite is having to shove a recorder in a 17-year-old kid’s face after he just poured his heart into a game and came out beaten and bruised.

Both happened on Friday night.

First came that feeling that everything is right with the world. That warm bubbling that puts a little skip in your step and a grin on your face that’s not meant for anyone but you. I get it every Friday night when I pop my head out of my car, the bright lights of Bruce Smith Field beckoning in front of me, calling to me like a rescue boat to a stranded sailor. My ears perk at the sound of the pep band, their music bouncing around the stadium and out into the parking lot. There’s the announcer, the scoreboard clicking down the minutes until kickoff and the kids tossing footballs behind the stadium, with dreams of playing under the lights when they are mostly grown.

The joy continues as the players are introduced, slapping low-fives and bumping shoulders in mid-air as the sun sets over Bell Field behind them. They rally together, Cody Mach in the center, shouting incantations in their closely drawn circle as they answer back in frothing screams. They sprint off. Special teams sprints on. It’s time to play.

And for awhile, things are good. The Falcons are tied early in the second half with Rochester JM. They seem fired up to start the second half.

“We were excited,” Riley Jandro says.

“We really had a lot of momentum,” Jake Salaba says. “It felt great.”

Then, in the words of Kanye West, it all falls down.

The Rockets score three times in under nine minutes and the previously pumped sideline, the one raising its arms at the crowd, bouncing on the balls of its feet and screaming at the players on the field has fallen silent.

Steps are shorter. Heads bent toward the ground. Silence reigns. The game ends, and now I have to talk to the players.

Darin Anderson is first. And noticeably upset. I want to talk to him because he recovered a fumble and made two key tackles in the backfield in the first half. None of that matters to him.

“We always end up not doing so well in the second half,” he says, dejectedly. “We have to get better at that.”

Jake Salaba, usually a great quote, is quiet and full of cliches. I ask him what it was like standing on the sidelines helplessly for much of the second half.

“It’s tough,” he says, “but we get through it as a team.”

I have to give him credit, though. When I ask him about the struggles in the passing game (2 of 13 for 24 yards), he offers no excuses.

“I had an off day,” he says. “I just didn’t perform.”

“Was it accuracy? Was it a timing thing? Were you getting pushed around in the pocket too much? Is there anything you can put your finger on?” I press.

“Nope,” he says, “I just didn’t do it.”

Last up is Jandro. He’s angry. See-it-in-his-eyes angry. Short, clipped words angry. He wraps up the whole night in six words.

“It sucks,” he says. “It’s Homecoming. It sucks.”

Yet it had started off so beautifully. Just another Friday night.