American Football in High School - How crazy was it?

It was several years since I was an exchange student but certain things you never forget. The American Football in High School was such a thing.

Now I’m going to tell you about a regular game day looked like in our small town Wamego. Or I’ll start the story the night before game day namely Thursday night.

A Thursday practise was kind of chilled but the athmosphere was not. It was mostly drilling plays over and over again. I who was the varsity kicker did what I used to do; steal two freshmens and trained kicking while the freshmans ran around like crazy chickens trying to return them.

After Thursday practise the team went together for dinner at somebodys home. It was like 40 huge football players eating like pigs so the family making the dinner probably became broke when we all left off.  : ) Thursdays always ended at night, 00:00 am, in the centre of the gamefield when the team met for peptalk. Yeah, it was a peptalk with only us players. The 4 captains began the cermony by telling us how important the game was and that we would kick their asses. It ended with a laud Waaaammeeeeggooo Raaaiiiders!! Today it sounds ridicilous but at that time it couldn’t be more serious. And it also worked because it really got me ready for the game the next day.

Friday morning started with me walking to school in my game jersey. It was a proud moment to be walking in the Varsity Jersey. In school “a secret cheerleader” had decorated my locker with paintings and ballons and put all kind of sweets in the locker. It was always some homebaked cookies and Gatorade (sportsdrink). It was awesome! It was also a goodlooking girl, named Amanda Flear, wearing my away-jersey in school.

After school at 3.00 pm we drove to the game field 3 km away. The drive took around 30 min because we the whole town had to drive back and forward on the main street a couple of times just to pump up the atmosphere further. Everyone was driving with the window down and loud favorite music. In Kansas that could be everything between hip hop to country music.

At 4 pm we had an easy practise without pads. For me it meant more kicking and more freshmens running around.  When it was like 45 min before kickoff we returned to our looker room and changed to game outfit. You could then here the cheerleaders outside and more people coming to see the game. 5 minutes to kickoff the priest came in. Yeah, for me it was really strange to have a priest in the looker room before the game. In Sweden there aren’t many people going to church and there is absolutly not any priest praying before games. But in the U.S everyone took one nee and hold the hand to the person next to you. The priest then wished us good luck and ended with the Lord’s Prayer.

As you see in high school movies we ofcourse got into game mode and started to hit eachother. We then ran out from the locker rooms to the game field while cheerleaders and 2000 spectators chearing for us. It was an unbelieveble cool feeling. And if that wasn’t enough, I who was the kicker started the game, if we won the coin toss. If that was the case I would then here everyone screaming CARLSSON, CARLSSON, CARLSSON before I made the kickoff the started the Friday night game. It was a crazy and awesome experience that I’ll never forget and probably never experience again.

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