 Pin Pinterest ⋆ Rec Recommend this Post 5

You Will Weep and Know Why A Football Game in Mississippi by William Browning

After sunset on a cool Friday evening in November 2005, two high school football teams played a game in Water Valley, Mississippi. Unless you were a player, coach or spectator you know nothing of what transpired after the lights came on. Even if you were, it may hold no special place in your memory. Not very long ago, a former newspaper reporter who was there told me, "Doesn't stick out." An assistant coach who stood on a sideline said, "The details are vague." A player who cried after time expired admits to hardly any recollection. No legends were born that night, no destinies revealed. A lot of the boys played both ways. A lot of jerseys did not fit right. No legends were born that night, no destinies revealed. A lot of the boys played both ways. A lot of jerseys did not fit right. Fathers hollered from the stands and mothers, when not fretting, snapped pictures. Four touchdowns were scored, two for each team, and the last play involved a quarterback taking a knee. A slow stream of fans headed home before the final horn blew. It was a first round playoff game — the losing team's season ended that night. The winning team moved to the second round, but lost, and its season ended then as well. They were only two evenly matched teams of mediocre talent that found success that year zeroing in on what each did well; that, and more or less methodically breaking the will of their opponents. The boys who played in the game are young men now. Some are married, some are fathers. They have gone off in different directions. But find players from both sides today and what they agree on is this: On Nov. 11, 2005, in a game that meant very little, they hit, and were hit, harder than any other time in their lives. On that night in north Mississippi, no will broke. That is what they remember, and that is what I cannot forget. I was there, watching. Nine years is enough time for shadows to grow and if I think about that game long enough, the shadow it casts in my memory reaches a sensitive place, and I cannot leave it alone. That game got inside of me. I wrote a game story about it for a little Mississippi newspaper, and I have talked about it at length at least twice. Once in a basement out West while eating chili, drunk in winter. And once while leaning on a tailgate in Florida, sweating in the sun after a game of pickup basketball. Both times, before I reached the end, I was fighting back tears, feeling vulnerable and foolish, because I could not understand or articulate the undertow of emotion I was experiencing. But memory can be fleeting, and false. This summer, in a heavy rain, I drove an hour and a half north from my home to Guntown, Mississippi, to meet a young man who played in the game. His name is Hunter Shipman. I had searched off and on for a recording of the game. No coaches ever came up with one. Neither could players. Shipman's father, though, had stood in the bleachers and taped the game, training a camera on the two teams. His son is married and raising children now, and on his lunch break we met beneath a Texaco awning alongside Highway 45 North, and he handed me a DVD copy. He did not understand why it meant so much to me. I have since watched it many times. It shows what happened on the field, but it does not show what was important. The footage is grainy, the colors muted. When it begins, the players from the visiting team are dressed in white and lined up toward an end zone, stretching. The home team, in blue uniforms, jogs toward its sideline. I watch the players take the field for the kickoff now, and they seem so much smaller, so much younger, than I remember. It is near winter, and the grass is more brown than green. I quit my high school football team but have grown to love the sport. Fall is my favorite time of year. What happened that night was simple and complicated, forgettable yet profound — and the greatest game I have ever seen. *** The Water Valley Blue Devils and the Kossuth Aggies had never met before. Most of the 230 public high school teams that play in the fall in Mississippi are made up of boys attending small schools in small towns. These two teams were no different. Water Valley lies across some north Mississippi hills, 20 miles south of Oxford and the University of Mississippi. A few years back The New York Times wrote about the town after some young people from Oxford moved in and made fashionable use of its quaint character and faded Victorian main street. But in 2005, it was a blue-collar place with one grocery store. Beer was illegal. Everyone knew what time the county tax collector took her daily walk. Kossuth is just over 90 miles to the northeast, an unincorporated Alcorn County town near the Tennessee line. A four-way stop marks the community's center and Kossuth High can be seen from there in the distance. Students sometimes run down to the Aggie Mart, a convenience store, for a lunch of pizza sticks and jojos. On weekends they slip over to Hatchie Bottom, leave empty beer bottles in the creek bed and drive 4X4 pickups through mud. The nearest town is Corinth, a 10-minute drive away. Families that start in places like these often stay, and football is important. Each loss hurts and wins are celebrated out of proportion. Beside a road leading into Water Valley is still a sign that brags that the Blue Devils went 15-0 in 1990, 24 years ago, and won a state championship. In Kossuth they still bring up the resolution the state legislature passed commending the 1998 Aggies, who finished 12-1 and won the Division I Class 3A championship. A sports reporter who has spent 22 years crisscrossing the Delta to watch games, while trying to explain the sport's hold on small towns, said, "It's an outlet for escaping farming or pulpwood hauling." Besides, he said, "There isn't much else to do." That there wasn't much to do in Kossuth is what brought Scott Gray to the area from Memphis, Tennessee, in 2004. As he entered his 40s with graying hair, a wife and three young children, he began to think a place like Memphis, as he said, "might not be the best place to raise a family." He was coaching at Christian Brothers High School when Kossuth's principal, an old friend, called to ask if he was interested in coming to coach in Mississippi. He was. He has a loud voice and can also level a young man with just a stare, and he found the Aggies unfocused. "I got in there and put my thumb on them," is the way he puts it. The team had only two other coaches — both assistants — and, under Gray, began scrimmaging a lot. "Oh, we banged," he said. He wanted to see what they were made of. He made players accountable to each other. When one missed summer workouts because he claimed he had no ride, Gray let the team vote on whether he should be allowed to play. Who your parents were toted no water with him — his own son did not start. Someone who practiced hard played in games. "I played the guys who deserved to play," he said. For most of the boys, it was the best team they would ever play on. For many, this was their final autumn of football. The team went 3-7 in 2004, but the next season the roster was senior-heavy, made up of players who had been together since their Pee-Wee days. Only three underclassmen started. "No standouts, really," Gray said. "But we got the most out of what we had." What he had was two senior running backs — Bubba McNeese and Ben Vansandt — who excelled at carrying the ball downhill. Gray put in an offensive package for them he dubbed, "Tank." It involved two tight ends, two fullbacks, a halfback and a lot of running straight ahead. McNeese took on the "Tank" persona. Vansandt became "Wolverine." Hunter Shipman, a tight end and linebacker, said the duo "laid a path of destruction. That's what they were about." The starting quarterback was a junior — Patrick Hinton — who wore number 16 because that was his father's number when he quarterbacked the Aggies. He had smooth feet, a cool presence and an arm just decent enough to keep a defense thinking. The team scored 313 points and posted an 8-2 regular season record. For most of the boys, it was the best team they would ever play on. For many, this was their final autumn of football. The same year Gray moved to Kossuth, Trent Hammond moved to Water Valley. In his late 30s, he came from southwest Mississippi, where he was coaching in his hometown of Monticello. His wife found good work in Oxford, though, and he took a job in Water Valley, becoming the head coach of a tight-knit staff. The offensive coordinator was the son of the school's superintendent. One assistant was a respected local doctor's son. Another was the son of a late Oxford novelist. They knew each other and each other's stories, and Hammond, who carries a quiet swagger and prefers a buzz cut, fit in just fine. The school is on Market Street but the practice field, where coaches keep the seed-heads mowed themselves, is on Wise Street, a few blocks away. Hammond sometimes gave players rides over to practice in the back of his pickup. When he arrived, the coach surveyed what he had to work with and decided the Blue Devils would run a wing-T offense. "I thought it played into what we had as an O-line and running back wise," Hammond said. He meant they had slow, tough backs, and physical offensive linemen. "We were going to be a misdirection team," he said. Offensive schemes often come with a splash — the wildcat, the run and shoot, the pistol and wishbone — but evolve or sometimes vanish when defenses catch up. The wing-T has never been snuffed out. When used today it is nearly identical to the offense first developed in the late 1940s at the University of Maine. A website devoted to its methods states simply, "It is not magic." With the quarterback in the backfield are three running backs and each time the ball is snapped all three travel in different directions and the quarterback gives the ball to one of them. Or maybe he keeps it himself. Deception is key. On each play the defense must determine which of the four backfield players heading different directions has the ball. Traps and pulling linemen add to the confusion, and as the game goes on, puzzled defenders are left with unsteady feet. Yards become easier to gain. Hammond, during long practices along Wise Street, liked to compare the wing-T to swinging an axe into a tree. Sooner or later, the tree falls. A lot of the yards Water Valley gained came during the second half, as that tree began to totter. Water Valley's running backs were Shannon Crow, Ronnie Ferrell and the Roberson brothers, Jarvis and Geraldo. The brothers could get to the edge. Crow and Ferrell, with short, compact bodies, did not want to: one imagines them going through lots of mouthpieces. More important than the backs in the wing-T, though, is the offensive line, which has to work together to synchronize its traps and pulls. Water Valley had all seniors: a huge center with long, curly hair, two guards with chubby faces and two undersized tackles with mean-streaks on the field. The tackles were identical twins — Danny and Larry Harris — with high IQs and flattops. Sometimes, in the name of competition, they switched jerseys (no. 65, no. 66) before or even during games. "Just to be extra confusing," Danny Harris said. "Gotta do what you gotta do." Coach Hammond's passion, though, was defense. Before a motorcycle crash put him in a wheelchair for a year, he played linebacker in high school. After that, he channeled his love of playing into coaching. He ran a 3-4 and had a group of fast, physical, 165-pound linebackers. Although he trusted his assistants, on defense he called the scheme himself before each play. He particularly liked unleashing linebackers. "I try to build a team around being able to stop people," he said.

Main street in Water Valley, Mississippi. (Photo by Jack Gurner) Main street in Water Valley, Mississippi. (Photo by Jack Gurner)

*** Hammond has soft eyes. Before the ‘05 season began, they got sad. His 7-year-old daughter, Maddie, began complaining of soreness in her abdomen two weeks before the first game. Eventually, she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic lymphoma and went into St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Hammond and his wife went with her, and he drove 85 miles back and forth to Water Valley every day for practice. He did not miss a game. He drove 85 miles back and forth to Water Valley every day for practice. He did not miss a game. The Blue Devils won the opener against Bruce High School. Three days later, Hurricane Katrina struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Water Valley is far enough north that it sustained only minor damage, but Hammond's hometown suffered. His 67-year-old father took a chainsaw to a tree fallen across a neighbor's home, just being helpful, and the old man died of a heart attack. Later that week, Water Valley beat Aberdeen High School. Hammond was on the sideline. A few weeks later, the team took a 2-1 record into a road game at Senatobia High School. Just before halftime, the team's safety, Jason Langdon, stretched out for an interception and rose from the ground walking in a circle, hanging his arm. Hammond thought, "It's a dislocated shoulder." He was wrong. The carotid artery in the safety's neck had torn. Langdon, a handsome blond senior, had a stroke and was airlifted to a hospital. Football was over for him. The team lost, but no one cared. Water Valley circled around itself. The town held fundraisers for Langdon and the Blue Devils won five straight, opposing teams averaging less than 10 points a game. They stumbled in the season finale against a fast Delta team, but finished second in its division, good enough to host a first-round playoff game. The extended season helped the town bear up some under all the bad news. Meanwhile, after losing by three to rival Corinth High School in the regular season finale, Kossuth finished third in its division. The loss sent the team to Water Valley to begin the playoffs. Before the game, Gray and his coaching staff watched some film of the Blue Devils. The run game stood out. "I knew they wanted to pound us down," Gray said. Kossuth decided they were going to pull their safeties up beside the linebackers, to plug holes, but on offense the approach would not change. They would unleash McNeese and Vansandt, maybe mix in some play-action and control the football. Hammond also watched film and felt his team was quicker. "We thought we were faster than them ... we thought we would be a good bit faster," he said. The coaching staff felt Kossuth players were too big to go through. The plan: Get to the corners and turn upfield. Outrun their opponent. The night before the game, the Aggies, as they had all season, gathered at quarterback Patrick Hinton's home. His mother cooked chicken spaghetti and the team watched more film of Water Valley. Hinton remembers thinking, "These guys are built like tree stumps, low to the ground, and are as quick as can be." He saw dives, fake dives, counters, pitches. He also noticed that the Blue Devils wore deep blue uniforms at home. "I knew it would be hard to tell who had the ball," he said. On Friday, the Kossuth team drove to Water Valley. In the bus, it was quiet. No Aggie team had ever won a road playoff game, and the players were aware of that, and anxious. It was a "strange" trip, Shipman said. He had no idea where Water Valley was, and the route went through the rolling hills and hardwoods of Holly Springs National Forest. Glidewell remembers it being a long ride, "like we were going to the middle of nowhere." He fell asleep. When he woke, the bus was still traveling. He wondered if they had gotten lost. "The sun's going down," Glidewell said. "It's November, so it's cold and gray out. It was an eerie feel." When they arrived, they noticed the Water Valley staff had painted the field. Along each goal line, there was a big number "2." That was Langdon's number. ***

An aerial view of Bobby Clark Field. (Via Google Earth) An aerial view of Bobby Clark Field. (Via Google Earth)

The Blue Devils play at Bobby Clark Field, which sits in a little valley between the local armory and a neighborhood with unlined streets and crumbling sidewalks. The late Bobby Clark coached the team in the 1960s. The home stands are concrete and dug into the side of a hill. The visitors' stands are aluminum and sit on a hill on the opposite side of the field. When Glidewell first saw Bobby Clark Field, he said, "It looked like it was a hole." Two banners hung on a fence. One read, "Death." The other read, "Valley." Perched above the south end zone is the home team's locker room, where the Blue Devil players gathered before the game, uneasy jitters in them. It had been a long year. Hammond was still mourning his father, and his daughter remained in St. Jude and Langdon had a tough road ahead. No one knew how things would turn out. "We had been through a lot that season," Danny Harris said. Kossuth fans came early. When the Aggies took the field, they were packed in the stands, already ringing the cowbells they bring to games, and the crowd seemed larger than it was. But the team warmed up in near silence. "We had no idea where we were," Shipman said. "That made us closer in a way." "An electricity swept through us. I'm getting chill bumps right now thinking about it." When Kossuth ran onto the field before kickoff, the crowd cheered and something inside the team shifted. Talking about what he felt when he came out of the visiting team's locker, Shipman said, "An electricity swept through us. I'm getting chill bumps right now thinking about it." It doesn't come through when I watch the DVD of the game, and even Shipman told me that when he watches it now, he finds the game itself "boring." I guess that is normal. For me, the footage reveals forgotten things. Leaves are scattered beside the stands. Along a hill beside the field, off-center from the crowd, are a group of elementary children. I don't remember noticing them that night. One after another, they tumble down, lost in their own play, laughing. And there I am at the bottom of the hill, in my mid-20s, holding a pen and notebook, my back to the kids, watching the game. Water Valley has a weekly newspaper called The North Mississippi Herald. At the time it was housed in an old downtown building with watermelons painted on its windows. I worked there as a reporter while in college at the University of Mississippi. The newsroom was a converted horse stable. Sometimes, when it rained, I sat at a desk and typed with my feet in water. I covered the town's Board of Aldermen in between classes in Oxford, and each fall I covered the high school football team. Before Friday night games began I would spend nearly half of my paycheck at either the El Charrito Mexican restaurant or Nallie's Egg Roll Place, and then drive with a full stomach over to the field. By the end of the game, I would be hungry again. A year earlier, after bouncing aimlessly around my hometown and picking up some bruises, I had moved to Oxford on a whim, intending to go to school, but the university denied me admittance because of poor grades. Devastated and shamed, I enrolled in a nearby community college and got a job as a security guard in Oxford. On Friday nights, I worked University of Mississippi fraternity houses, checking IDs at doors. I did not recognize myself in the uniform. As carefree undergraduates filed by with tipsy, gorgeous dates on their arms, it was a parade reminding me of my failures. When I would arrive home after midnight and find my roommate entertaining a coed, I would step upstairs to my bedroom alone, feeling old, and get some rest before heading to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium at daybreak to work Ole Miss home games. I was stationed in a dark tunnel leading to the football field where the Ole Miss twirlers warmed up. Their glistening short skirts and long, tan legs came to represent what I felt I had missed, what was unattainable. I was 25 and already doors were closing. But they didn't lock. The University of Mississippi eventually let me in, The Herald hired me and I soon moved to Water Valley. A kind woman whose family had owned the weekly newspaper let me stay in a home she owned on Prospect Drive, rent-free. For the first time, I tasted independence and cherished my job. The hurt that quitting my high school football team caused did not surface until years later. I needed to age some to taste the regret. Still, writing about high school football, and seeing those boys in the best time of their lives, suited up on Friday nights, while my own youth was fleeing, made me feel invisible. I was easy to miss and hid a lot. When I got to Bobby Clark Field that night, the Kossuth High bus was parked and empty. The boys were on the field.

(Photo by David Howell) (Photo by David Howell)

*** Water Valley received the opening kickoff and the hitting began early. It never let up. "It was a physical game," Trent Hammond remembers. "That was Kossuth's deal. That's how they got there — being physical. But our guys were physical. ... Whoever won that game was going to have to fight and claw for everything." Bubba McNeese was on Kossuth's kickoff coverage team to begin the game. He was the first Aggie down the field and launched himself into a Blue Devil blocker. He stood up and did not appear woozy. When I contacted him to talk about the game a few months ago, he said he would be happy to help. Then he added that he does not remember much about the next 48 minutes: "I got a concussion on the opening kickoff." A tone had been set. The Blue Devils, with the home fans still coming in and finding a space in the stands, began at their own 28-yard line. Kossuth defenders remember thinking that Water Valley's offensive line was the biggest they had seen all year. "They were some cornbread-fed boys who didn't mind getting physical with you," Shipman said. "They were some cornbread-fed boys who didn't mind getting physical with you." On the game's first play, Trea Higdon, Water Valley's offensive coordinator, called for a dive to Crow. One of the Harris twins — it is impossible to know which one because of their penchant for switching jerseys — pushed an Aggie linebacker 10 yards down field. As Kossuth tried to determine who had the ball, Shannon Crow picked up 9 yards through the middle of the defense. A few plays later Higdon called for a power pitch to Ferrell that picked up 4 more hard yards. Higdon would call that play more than a dozen times. The drive fizzled out when a set pass on third down came up short, and Water Valley punted. No worry spread through the Blue Devil sideline or stands. The team had gotten off to slow starts all year. Kossuth took over on its own 21-yard line. On second down, Vansandt, the faster of the team's two running backs, took a dive handoff up the middle. Just past the line of scrimmage he cut toward the sideline and was not tackled until nearly 50 yards later, deep in Water Valley territory, and cowbells were ringing. That was the longest single play of the night. From that point forward, nothing came easy. On Water Valley's sideline, Hammond noticed something. Before that play, he had believed his team had the edge in speed. "When we got to playing," he said, "they were a whole lot faster than what we thought. I think they were actually a little faster than we were. So they were a little bigger, and a little faster than us." But Water Valley's undersized defense had pursued the right angles and stepped in the right holes all season. On the first play after Vansandt's run, two Water Valley linebackers shot a gap and stopped Vansandt in the backfield. On the next play, Crow made a stop at the line of scrimmage and stood up shaking his fist. The home crowd rumbled. During every game that season there was a moment when players along the Kossuth sideline sensed that the team was in control, dictating the action with their physical play. At no point during the Water Valley game did Kossuth feel it was in control, and neither did Water Valley. In a strange way, the two teams became one and would not budge. No one knew McNeese's condition and he came back into the game for Kossuth, just as he had all season. Hinton remembers that at some point McNeese walked into the team's huddle talking about going to eat at McDonald's. It was an odd moment, but Hinton didn't think much of it. On the next play, after he pitched the ball to McNeese on a sweep, he understood why the senior running back was talking about fast food hamburgers in the middle of a playoff game. With no defender near, McNeese bobbled the ball, and it fell to the ground. When he showed no real interest in picking it up, Antonio Hoskins, a Water Valley linebacker, fell on it. The Blue Devils sent their offense out. They were on their own 42-yard line. On the sideline, Hinton told the coaching staff he feared McNeese had suffered a concussion. The running back came out of the game. Water Valley began chopping at the tree. A series of dives and counters, sweeps and keepers later, the team was on Kossuth's 3-yard line. On the first play of the second quarter, Ferrell took a power pitch in for a touchdown. Kicker Derek Croy made the extra-point. The Blue Devils held a 7-0 lead, but it had taken 12 plays to move down half the field. Kossuth had shown its mettle. Nothing was clear after 12 minutes of football. What followed would not be as much about winning or losing, as the stuff that holds a shine after the lights dim: will and desire and love. Those things illuminate moments that last and linger. As the next 36 minutes ticked off the scoreboard, those things are all that would remain. "Back and forth," said Curtis Glidewell, a senior wide receiver on the Kossuth team and the school's valedictorian that year. "Back and forth." Kossuth received the ensuing kickoff and the team leaned on Vansandt. He picked up 10 yards on the first play, 5 on the second, 18 on the next. The Blue Devil defense bowed up a few times and forced two fourth downs on the drive, but each time Kossuth converted by inches. On the goal line, the team lined up in a shotgun formation. Hurt by Vansandt's legs, Water Valley bit on play-action and Hinton found Shipman, his tight end, open in the end zone's corner to make it 7-7. There was 5:50 left in the first half. Water Valley could not move the ball on the next possession. Kossuth was stacking the box with its safeties, and the Blue Devil offensive line could not block them all. At high school games there are always these weathered men in big coats who, instead of finding a place in the stands to sit, crowd a fence line together to stand and watch. I suspect they were griping about Hammond's wing-T offense, which to the untrained eye, looked slow and predictable. But the coach did not waver. After a Water Valley punt, Kossuth began at its own 30-yard line. Seven plays later, with 22 seconds to go in the second quarter, Vansandt took a sweep in for the team's second touchdown. Water Valley had made its path to the playoffs by stopping opponents' running games. Now they were getting pushed off the ball. On the extra point, the emotions which had been simmering the entire first half finally surfaced. A false start flag was thrown just before the ball snapped. Ferrell, who told me this summer he played with a chip on his shoulder, was unaware that the play was dead. He rushed ahead and knocked down Hinton, the Kossuth holder, and was flagged for it. He did not barrel through him — in fact, the video seems to show him letting up before the collision, and Hinton may have done a little acting. It did not matter. The encounter caused each team and their fans to draw closer together. In between the clang of cowbells, Kossuth fans screamed curse words. I was on the sideline, on the opposite end of the field, and my spine shivered. I wanted to be out there. I wanted to be hit. I know now why the men on fence lines stand there. They come together to swap stories, the kind that grow a little bigger with each telling, and relive their youth. But on the sideline, I only knew, and felt, that as time ticks by, there are fewer and fewer places to hide. I feared I had no stories to tell. When the teams went to the locker rooms, Kossuth was up, 14-7. Higdon, who coached the Water Valley offensive line, got a board out and made the offensive linemen sit in front of it as he drew. He changed up a blocking scheme or two. "Instead of blocking down on one guy, we start kicking him out — that sort of thing," Hammond said. Hammond also talked to his linebackers. He is the type of coach who stays so amped during the season he chugs Nyquil the night before games in order to get some sleep. Whatever he said, worked. One Water Valley coach said that, over the next two quarters, the defense played its best football of the year. Vansandt had rushed for 99 yards in the first half. In the second, he rushed for 13. The entire Kossuth offense would gain only 41. "They came out and hit us in the mouth," Gray said. Kossuth took the ball to begin the third quarter. They crept into Water Valley territory, and on a fourth down, when Vansandt took a dive into the defense's teeth, he was met by Ferrell, who stopped him short of the sticks. More longform from this author They call him 'coach' The last cockfighter tells all Here there be alligators Ferrell sensed the Kossuth defenders tiring out and backing off of the wing-T, and the Blue Devils followed their offensive line 76 yards down the field on 14 straight running plays. The drive took more than six minutes. If the first half was a challenge, the second was the response. On Kossuth's 2-yard line, Higdon called for a power pitch, and Ferrell scored. On the touchdown, Kevin West, the team's center, manhandled a Kossuth defensive lineman into the end zone. As West left the field, our paths crossed for a moment, and I noticed a grimace on his face. I still remember the tears rolling down his cheeks. Echoes. When I learned my parents were divorcing, when a girl I pined for disappeared, when my grandfather sat me down beside the Tallahatchie River and listed what I needed to be ashamed of — I cried for all those things. A football game had never knocked my heart off balance. But that night, on the sideline after a hard-fought touchdown, that type of emotion felt real and right. I feared the chance for me was gone forever. Still, to grasp again an opportunity like that and know, bone-deep, that win or lose, I had tried — that's what I yearned for. When the Blue Devils lined up for the extra-point, I noticed how beautiful the noise of a cheering crowd could be. Croy, who everyone called "Chili Pepper," was a thin senior who sometimes worked on his technique with a retired NFL kicker. He had struggled early in the season but eventually found a rhythm: He had made 29 straight kicks, according to Hammond. "He was as close to they come to automatic in high school ball," the coach said. "If the ball was spotted inside the 15-yard line, he was money in the bank." I could find no footage of the extra-point — Hunter Shipman's father had turned the camera off. This summer, both Larry Harris, the team's long-snapper, and Antonio Johnson, the team's starting quarterback and holder, could not be tracked down. Two newspaper articles written about the game described the snap as "high." Hammond is not sure. "Bobbled snap?" he said. "High snap?" Hinton lined up as an outside rusher on Kossuth's kick block team. He is adamant that the snap was good. "I was down there eye-level with it," he said. "It was not that bad of a snap. It seemed to me like he was going to pull it and try to run it in either way." Either way, Croy did not get a chance to swing his leg at it. Johnson caught the ball after Harris snapped it, hopped to his feet, and began a charge for the corner of the end zone. Making it across the line meant giving Water Valley the lead and propelling them deeper into the playoffs. Curtis Glidewell was out there on defense. The decision he had to make was either to drop back and guard a receiver that had slipped into the end zone, or move up on Johnson. Choices like that are what get us where we are at. He decided to move on Johnson. Water Valley had struggled to pass the ball all game and Glidewell figured if he rushed Johnson, a throw might miss the receiver. "I remember hitting him as hard as I possibly could right in the center of his chest," Glidewell said. He described the feel like "a sledge hammer hitting me right in the forehead." It was the hardest collision of his career. The rattle made everything go black, he said. A split-second later his mind's lights came back on and all of the snot in his nose had smeared across his face. From his knees, he looked down the sideline at his teammates, and saw them jumping up and down, cheering. He had stopped Johnson a foot from the goal line. "I figured I had stopped him," Glidewell said. "But it took me a few seconds to be happy ‘cause my head was hurting so bad." Kossuth's lead stood at 14-13. On the Water Valley sideline, Hammond paced with his head bowed and a premonition came into him. Croy had not missed converting a kick in a long time and the coach hated to think about how this would affect him.

Quarterback Patrick Hinton fights for extra yards. (Photo by William Browning) Quarterback Patrick Hinton fights for extra yards. (Photo by William Browning)

Midway through the third quarter, the teams began exchanging punts, each offense meeting each defense like steel striking steel. Hinton said the fourth quarter was the most intense 12 minutes he ever spent playing football. Ferrell, the Water Valley running back, said, "I'm not saying the game was dirty. It wasn't. No cheap shots. But if you had a chance to square a guy up and knock his block off, you did it." Ever since Langdon's injury, Water Valley's secondary had been the weakest part of the defense. Kossuth, starting at its own 30-yard line, decided to take a "home run shot," Hinton said. There were nine minutes left in the game and the team wanted to get on Water Valley's side of the field and run some clock out. It was third down when Hinton dropped back and lofted a jump ball down the sideline. James Johnson, a Blue Devil safety, beat the Kossuth receiver to the spot and made an interception on the play. He strutted off the field holding the football straight up in his hand. Something special was happening. "Every ounce of hard work and sweat had come down to that moment and we did not want to let it slip away." Water Valley, down by one point, lined up its wing-T for one last drive. The offensive line — seniors that had paved a way all season — knew it. The team was on its own 30-yard line. "I remember giving every last ounce of energy we had to get down the field," Danny Harris said. "My legs had never burned so much in my entire life. Every ounce of hard work and sweat had come down to that moment and we did not want to let it slip away." Larry Harris, his brother said, had been the emotional leader of the offensive line all year and on the drive he played with "rage." "He was unstoppable," Danny Harris said. "Come hell or high water his man was going to be out of the play. He never doubted for a second that we would win that game and the O-line was going to lead us there." Water Valley ran 13 plays, chipping off yards a few at a time. On a third-and-long, Antonio Johnson found Ferrell with a strike to move the sticks. On the next play, Ferrell took a pitch 15 yards downfield with two Kossuth linebackers trying to pull him down. Along the way, Bryant Mix, a Water Valley native who after a stint with the Houston Oilers came to coach the defensive line at his alma mater, charged down the sideline pumping his fist in enthusiasm. The team was inside the Kossuth 15-yard line with 3 minutes to play. It was first down. Higdon called for a sweep to Geraldo Roberson. He and his brother had been spotty all game. If they got a step in space, they could dart for a nice gain. But in traffic they slowed easy. The running back took the football running toward the edge and appeared to have an open path to the end of the field. Then he fell face first. Hammond believes his running back slipped. The DVD suggests a Kossuth linebacker might have made a shoestring tackle just past the line of scrimmage. The clock kept running as Roberson got to his feet and walked to the huddle. On the next play, Crow took a dive up the middle and was met in the hole by a sophomore linebacker playing in place of McNeese. It was third down. A choice had to be made. The team called a timeout. "We were talking on the headsets," Hammond said. "We had made a decision on what we wanted to do. If we didn't score, we wanted to give Chili Pepper a chance to kick it and win the ballgame ... we made the decision to kick it on third down." Water Valley sent out its kicker. Danny Harris was not on the kicking team. He walked to the Water Valley sideline and took his helmet off. "I remember having a bad feeling about it," he said. "I couldn't look. I was so gassed that I couldn't even walk straight." He kneeled behind some teammates and kept his eyes away from the field. Hinton lined up on the Kossuth side, on the edge, preparing to rush Croy. Before he had become the team's starting quarterback, Hinton played special teams, and always took pride in it. When he put his hand on the ground to ready himself for the snap, the interception he had thrown on Kossuth's last possession flashed in his mind. "I told myself it was do-or-die right there," he said. "I felt like I had a good chance because of what I had seen on the two extra-points earlier in the game." The referee blew his whistle. Johnson looked at Larry Harris, peering back through his legs with his hands on the football, and showed him his palm. The snap came clean. The outside edge blocker for the Blue Devils — a senior playing his first year of football — stepped out, instead of down, and Hinton's opportunity was there. "I shot right through," he said. As Croy's foot met the ball, Hinton laid out, almost parallel to the ground, with the entire season beneath him. As the ball lifted into the air, he got part of a hand on it, a couple of fingers maybe. Instead of tumbling end over end through the uprights, and sending the people standing on the concrete stands into joy, the ball fluttered like a bird taken on the wing and falling. It struck the bottom crossbar and fell away, no good. "I remember hearing Derek Croy kick it and the other side started cheering," Danny Harris said. "I didn't know whether he had missed or what, but it didn't matter." When we remember we push as far down the line as is possible and ghosts remain, making us reflect always on what might have been, on what, if given the chance, we would do different. Water Valley was out of timeouts and only two minutes and thirty seconds remained on the scoreboard. Kossuth's offense went into its "Tank" formation. McNeese entered the game again. He bobbled one handoff, but did not fumble, and the team crept into Water Valley territory. The Blue Devils eventually forced a punt and had half a minute for a miracle, but it did not come. The team's offense was not built to move fast. When Johnson threw a pass Glidewell intercepted along the Water Valley sideline, fans were already leaving. Kossuth's offense came out and Hinton took a knee. Aggie players rushed the field holding their helmets in the air and Hinton jumped on Glidewell's shoulders. McNeese, looking dazed, his face sweat-drenched, wandered around taking pictures alongside family and friends. "I remember having the feeling that life as I knew it was over. It seemed like everything we worked for had been for nothing." After shaking their opponents' hands, a group of Water Valley players gathered at midfield, arms around shoulders, and cried. Their coaches and cheerleaders stood nearby, in witness. "I remember having the feeling that life as I knew it was over," Danny Harris said. "It seemed like everything we worked for had been for nothing." Those were a boy's feelings. Nothing was over. Maddie Hammond eventually left the Memphis hospital recovered from lymphoma. The brown grass on Bobby Clark Field would grow green again and while the number "2" painted on it vanished, Jason Langdon fought through his rehab, not forgotten by his hometown. As players left the field for the last time that night in Water Valley, the Kossuth marching band, spread out in the visitor's bleachers and played, "Sweet, Sweet Spirit," a gentle hymn. Endings come to everything that can be loved — a girl's attention, the touch of a father's whiskers on a daughter's cheek, a game — but when we leave this place, we will be revived in the remembering of what was, and good. To avoid the crowd, I slipped out the far gate. I knew that the notes in my hand told a good story, and maybe a great one, and that I would not quit until it was told. On that hill beside the field, children continued to roll to the bottom, stand, and race back to the top, eager to go back down again. You may not notice, but some are there this fall, I am sure. Producer: Chris Mottram | Editor: Glenn Stout | Copy Editor: J.R. Wilco