Post Turkey Day Football...

The great thing about Thanksgiving weekend, well besides leftovers, is football on Friday afternoon, and then another on Friday night. This Friday it was two small school battles. And, all four team were area schools. The first game was a blowout and was kind of expected.

Afternoon football is awesome, the light is nice, I don't have to worry about stadium lights, and even better I don't have to worry about hoping something will happen in the first half because of deadlines.

This Friday afternoon I covered Albany High School vs. Gorman in Graham, about 100 miles northeast of Abilene. This game got pretty ugly. Albany is traditionally a good program, Gorman was outclassed by a bigger and more physical team. Albany ran all over them.

Friday night's game was a lot tighter game. It was a six-man game. Now if you've never experienced six-man football it's pretty crazy. The field is a little smaller, and so are the players and there is a LOT more scoring. Well, there is USUALLY a lot more scoring! The game I covered on Friday was a defensive battle with the final score being 38-24.

Now, I know in a normal game 62 points for two teams is pretty high scoring. But when the winning team is typically scoring in the 70's, and a team scoring over 100 points isn't that uncommon, then 62 points total is a defensive battle!

The game was in Trent, a small town about 30 miles west of Abilene. I was kind of pressed for time, since it was 130 miles from Graham to Trent, after fighting a line of cars to get into the stadium, the game had already started. But, I wasn't too worried since I was expecting quite a bit if scoring. Trent High School has probably the nicest six-man stadium in the country. Most six-man stadiums are tiny crappy little stadiums being played on dead grass, rotting wooden stands, and the original lights that were put up probably 40+ years ago. Trent's stadium was built last year soon after its new high school. I'm told it is the only six-man stadium in the country to play on artificial turf, the reason being it was going to cost as much to run a water line the half-mile to the stadium as it would to just put down turf, so they went the waterless route, and built a six-man Taj Mahal of sorts. There are nice metal bleachers and new lights which aren't half-bad for a high school stadium. The funny things is, despite the nice new stands, people still watch the games from their cars, well it was cold that night.