Wixon: For seniors, high school football was the experience of a lifetime

 

The most exciting time of the high school football season, the six-week road to the championship, is just around the corner. But before the playoffs arrive next week, thousands of kids will play their last game this week.

Not just the last game of the season. The last game ever.

For seniors, whether they are starters or players who rarely get on the field, it can be an emotional time. It's also a time for thinking about what football has meant to them during their years of playing the game.

"It is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said Highland Park senior center Jack Sides. "It occupies all my time but I wouldn't have it any other way."

You'll hear something like that from a lot of football players. Many of them have played football for 10 years or more, starting with flag football, moving on to pee-wee tackle leagues and then to middle-school teams. They know there are more important things in life than football, but as adolescents, especially in Texas, it's easy to embrace an identity as "football player."

 

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Why is high school football important?

 

"It teaches lessons that the rest of high school fails to teach you. High school football teaches the importance of determination, perseverance, camaraderie, how to overcome adversity, and sacrifice, which are lessons that can't be taught or tested with a pen and paper."

-- Blake Watson, Flower Mound Marcus linebacker

"High School football is important because it gives a person the work ethic that they can't receive from anywhere else, it transforms a boy into a man and creates a lifelong bond between a group of guys that is stronger than anything in this world."

-- Pepper Snider, Frisco Legacy Christian Academy tight end

"High School Football is important because it shows you how to be a part of something that is bigger than an individual person. You are more than just a football team, you are a family, even if you don't like everybody on the team."

-- Dustin McNeely, Rockwall defensive back Dustin McNeely

 

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