The “Boys of Fall”……what a great tune. Yeah, it’s a country tune- but there is no rock song that better describes the high school football experience than this one. Score one for Kenny Chesney. Just listening to this song makes me emotional.
This past weekend, my son Tyler played in the Division 5 NHIAA State Football Championship. It was a hard fought battle, played in the mud, just the way smashmouth football should be. Alas, the fairytale ending we had wished for was not to be. The Somersworth High Toppers lost to Monadnock, 9-0. It just wasn’t our day. We tip our hat to an excellent Monadnock team. They’re a class program, with class fans. Congratulations.
There just aren’t words to describe how proud of I am of the way my son and his teammates played the game. For them, the loss will sting for a long time, but will eventually fade. The life lessons learned on that field, however, will last forever.
On that cool Fall afternoon, I watched him and his teammates silently leave the field, as the fans applauded. And for some strange reason it hit me – that my son, who started playing football at the age of 8, was a boy no longer. He was a man. It wasn’t the loss that made him so. It was the journey that got him to that game.
I thought about that on my drive home that day. Both of our kids played sports. My daughter chose field hockey, basketball and softball. My son, football, basketball, and baseball. There aren’t many bleachers in NH that we haven’t sat on, sidelines we haven’t stood on, or distant schools we haven’t traveled to. It was somewhere on those roads, and at those places – that they became adults. But like most parents, you don’t notice as it’s happening. It hits you all at once.
And that’s when it hit me.
There would be no more “Friday Night Lights”. No more cool autumn nights with fog settling on the field as the boys fought for an extra yard. There would be no more practices, and team nights. No more packing lunches for the long bus rides, or cheering from the sidelines with other parents. No more deciding who would get to wear his jersey at school. No more getting the game early, or rushing home to see if he made it onto the tv sportscast. No more screaming when he made a big tackle or block. As my youngest child walked off that field that day…..it was all over.
A billion parents have been where I am at right now. It kind of feels like a bridge between childhood and adulthood, and part of me doesn’t want him to cross it.
Yes, I will miss my son’s and daughter’s sporting moments terribly. That is true. But if I’m being honest, it’s not really the fact that he won’t be playing football again (or my daughter won’t be playing softball) that stings the most. It’s more so about where my wife and I are in OUR lives. For these past 19 years, their lives have revolved around ours, and ours around theirs. Intertwined. Not so, anymore.
They will create their own lives, and we will be spectators once again. And although I truly am excited about the things that lay in their, and our, future- I am sad at the closing of this chapter of our life. I will miss it always.
I will always have the song “The Boys of Fall” to bring those memories back to me, and I will always remember the day my son took the field, as a boy – and left it 10 years later.....as a man.
And while there may be tears in my eyes at this thought, there’s a smile on my face- because my heart is filled with pride….
Greg Kretschmar
