Storm the Field

As a seventh grader, I accompanied my family to almost every Robert E. Lee High School football game. The year was 2004, and we just kept on winning. Pretty soon, our treks to games were no longer down Vine to Rose Stadium or even down 20 to Longview. We were in the playoffs and games were in exotic locations, like Waco and Texas Stadium. And then, we played the state championship game. In the Alamodome. And per tradition my family packed up the car, donned our Red Raider gear, invested in body paint, and made the pilgrimage to San Antonio to cheer on our boys. Being a seventh grader, I was one of very few people my age who actually attended playoff games, which translates to: I sat with my parents. This game, though, I was invited to sit with my brother and his friends - all unbelievably cool freshmen. Oh, yeeeah. I could hardly believe my good fortune when I sat down in their mob, looking around and just knowing that every one probably thought I was in high school. Oh, yeeeah. I was eating it up. To make it even better, my brother and his cronies were all shirtless and painted red, spelling "Go Raiders" and beating upended Home Depot buckets as drums. (One of my freshman friends wrote "Go Big Red" in paint on my face. Oh, yeeeah.) I can't tell you much about the actual football, but Lee pulled it out in the end and we took State. It was amazing. The entire section of super cool freshmen around me jumped to their feet and started running down the bleachers, over the barrier, onto the field...and I stayed in the stands. I stood there, like a bump on a log, worried that I would be arrested or lose my purse filled with lip gloss and breath mints if I moved one inch. So I stayed.

I'm not much on regrets. I don't have many, I don't dwell on the few that I do, but this has always been lurking in the back of my mind. Why didn't I storm the field? Worse, will I ever have another chance to?

This past Saturday, Tech played its homecoming game against climpsun. Now, I love my boys, but performance with the pigskin has been a little shaky as of late, and people who know much more about football than I do weren't expecting too much in the way of results. We got to Bobby Dodd real early in order to be nearest to the front of SWARM as possible and watched the pregame clock tick down. If you've ever been to a football game early, you know that the teams warm up. You probably knew that even if you haven't ever been to a football game early. The kickers warm up by practicing extra points. That means footballs kicked rather hard intermittently rocket into the stands. Most of the time, these balls are either caught by zealous fans or land in empty stand space. Sometimes, these balls are casually avoided by large guys standing a row ahead and continue in their trajectory to hit people in the stomach who are sitting down and not paying attention. I've heard that after impact, these people often melt into a pool of laughter and tears before shooting double thumbs up to the rest of the crowd who has been staring and shouting "Are you OK?". Yes. It was me. I was that girl. Of course. That was my excitement before the game. My excitement during the game was that Tech came out of nowhere to play supremely well and WIN! We took Clemson! Starting 4th quarter, the buzz around me began to toss around the idea of storming the field. Would we do it? There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that if even only one other person ran on that field, I would be going, too. For seven years I've lived in mental anguish over storming football fields, and I am happy to say that my mind has finally been put at ease. We took Clemson and the field! I have stormed a field, and you know what? I didn't get arrested or lose my lip gloss.

Clemson is a redneck school, doodah, doodah...