Dacula football

Dacula players get the season started in the Corky Kell Classic.

Most of the summer was like a roller coaster. One day I was sure that high school football would return, the next not so much. Emotions rolled like the daily news cycle from hopeful to discouraged.

Even in the weeks and then days leading up to the season-opening Corky Kell Classic, I was not convinced it would happen. Yet here we are, two days into the high school football season with more games tonight and for many teams, opening night.

Like McEachern Coach Franklin Stephens told me when asked should we even be playing high school football in these times, “Good, bad or indifferent I don’t know, but I do know that it’s good that these kids are back together on a team.”

He and his staff, like many or most around the state, would conduct “wellness” checks on his players during the shutdown. They wanted to make sure they were keeping up with their academics, if they were still working out, were they studying the play book, but most importantly, where were they emotionally?

North Gwinnett cheerleaders

North Gwinnett cheerleaders support their team.

Credit: Nicole Seitz, Gwinnett Daily Post

While, thank God, the pandemic, has not taken a great physical toll on our children, I do believe it has produced depression, anxiety and fear in our youth. Life milestones were missed, moments to be celebrated abandoned, just the laughter and fun of being with friends shuttered behind the walls of their homes which had suddenly become a fortress against the deadly virus.

Just imagine being a child, and that includes a high school student, and being saddled with the burden that if you go out and see your friends, you might contract the virus and bring it home and kill your family. Have that crawl around in the recesses of your mind for several months and see what darkness that brings. Yes, it has been a nasty virus in so many ways.

That’s why the last two days have been so refreshing.

There’s no doubt things are different at high school football games. Everybody is wearing a mask. There’s not as many fans, as capacity at most stadiums has been limited to 25-30 percent. Players social distance on the sidelines. North Gwinnett players stand on dots separated by at least six feet and every player has his own water jug. The ever-present smell of grilling burgers, hot dogs and popcorn is gone, only prepackaged food allowed at the concession stand. The band sits spread-out in the end zone.

But the return of high school football is about so much than all those things and so much more than just a football game being played.

It represents a victory. Not that we’ve defeated the virus. Every day we are reminded that it’s still out there. No, the victory is that we can still live our lives. We can get back to “normal,” even if it isn’t totally normal.

We don’t have to hide in fear, but we can find ways to overcome. We don’t diminish the seriousness of the disease, in fact the exact opposite. We acknowledge how dangerous it can be and we come up with ways to combat it. We don’t quit and say there’s no hope. Instead we find a way to live with it and fight it until its evil clutches are forever broken.

That’s what the return of high school football means! We haven’t necessarily won, but we haven’t been beaten either. We are still in the game; we have the ball… and we’re driving toward the game-winning touchdown.