When are losers winners?
Look north in Bossier Parish to Plain Dealing High School.
The Lions tee it up for the final time at home in 2024 Friday night when Lincoln Prep visits for a District 1-1A game with a predictable outcome. Plain Dealing hasn’t won in 33 games since the middle of the 2021 season, when a few of the players taking the field Friday night were in elementary school.
Although the visiting Panthers will happily ride home to Grambling, their opponents should walk away proudly.
Last month, coach Clint Walker’s team had just 16 players, some in junior high.. Last week, after an injury or two and a departure or two, the Lions had less than 11 available to compete, and had to forfeit their Week 8 game at Jonesboro-Hodge. There was no assurance, just noble intentions, for Plain Dealing to make it back on the field this week, or for next Friday’s season finale at Pickering.
But the plan is to get back into action. In an extremely discouraging situation, those kids – who are competing despite the smallest enrollment of any football-playing school in Louisiana – are doing more than playing out the string. They’re standing tall for each other, for their classmates, for their school, and for their community.
They’re also doing it for the love of the game. No sport is easy. In no other sport do the players absorb the amount of bumps, bruises and bone-rattling hits.
Never played? Neither had St. Martinville defensive end Rodney Phearse before the former California Golden Gloves boxer lined up for the south Louisiana school in a season-opening 1984 contest at New Iberia. Rodney had a great game, with 3-4 sacks and more tackles as St. Martinville shocked NISH 14-0.
I covered the game for the local paper, and had to ask the newcomer to the sport how he would describe what happened.
“We were doing the hitting,” said Rodney, grinning broadly. “They were doing the getting hit.”
Who do you think had more fun?
It would have been easy for those Plain Dealing boys who had injuries, or had recently decided to put up their helmets to get started on basketball, to not respond to Walker’s roundup for players over the past week or so.
But as of Tuesday, the Lions were 13 strong.
Those who had remained were still there. Those who returned, for whatever reasons, have given their teammates the gift of being able to finish what they started – no small feat in today’s society, especially not in a bleak scenario.
It won’t be fun to look at the scoreboard. But it will be fun to seize the moment, to score small victories on this play and that snap, and to know that every one of those 13 is doing something to support the other 12.
In 1957, the fabled Homer Iron Men played the last seven games of their regular season with just 13 boys, and lost only once. They made an incredible run to the state championship game and will forever live in Louisiana high school football lore.
The 2024 Plain Dealing Lions football team won’t be remembered that way. But each of the players and coaches can always remember how they faced ridiculous odds, kept fighting, and stood tall for each other.
That’s winning.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com