Whether you are a player, coach or fan, it’s the game you look for with red pen in hand when you scan the upcoming high school football schedule.
There are usually 10 games listed, but one jumps out like it is printed in neon. THAT game.
Here in the middle of September, the rivalry stars have aligned for local high school football, proving that big games aren’t necessarily played at the end of the year.
The Soul Bowl was last week.
Byrd vs. Captain Shreve was last night. So was Airline vs. Benton.
The Brotherton Bowl is tonight.
Depending on who you talk to, these are “just another game” or a season-maker. You certainly got the impression that it was a season-maker for Booker T. Washington last week when the Lions came away with a 12-6 win over Green Oaks in the Soul Bowl.
More than any of the others, that’s a game you have to see to fully appreciate. If everything goes right for BTW this year and they were to clinch a district championship, it is very possible that the celebration would not match the one they had at Leonard C. Barnes Stadium.
“This is our Bayou Classic,” said BTW coach Gary Cooper in referencing the Grambling-Southern game played every year in the Superdome.
Byrd and Shreve students have been known to perform various shenanigans in the days leading up to their game. Even though Shreve coach Adam Kirby tries to downplay the significance with the ol’ “it’s big because it’s a district game,” that seems to fall on deaf eyes.
It’s a nice try, but that doesn’t change overnight.
Once upon a time, there was a definitive separation between Airline and Benton. Now, not so much. The line between north Bossier and Benton has just about disappeared. Benton was once a little Class 2A school in the country. Now they are both in Class 5A and it has become neighbor vs. neighbor.
Not quite brother vs. brother. Oh wait, that is happening with the Brotherton Bowl. Jason’s Haughton Buccaneers will travel to Parkway to meet little brother Coy’s team. The teams are a combined 5-1; there’s no telling what the Jason-vs.-Coy-in-the-backyard-as-kids record is.
Are too much made of these games, as Shreve’s Kirby has suggested? From the outside looking in, maybe so. But there is nothing wrong with having a little something extra to play for.
All games are not created equal and with the neutering of district games by the ever-changing LHSAA formats, having something that gets the blood boiling does make you want to make sure you leave those three hours open on your personal schedule.
You also have to learn to appreciate them while you can because a redistricting is always right around the corner. Coaches these days are always conscious of accumulating power points when constructing a schedule. They’d much rather try to improve their potential playoff chances than worry about trying to keep a rivalry game going in a non-district schedule.
The exception, of course, is BTW and Green Oaks. Even though the Lions are 4A and the Giants are 2A, they are going to play. (The rest of these are District 1-5A games, so it’s just a matter of where those dates fall in the district rotation.)
How important are these games? Probably just depends on whether you have the bigger number on the scoreboard when it’s over.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com