State College Area High School’s undefeated football season came to an end on Dec. 3 with a loss to Harrisburg in the state semifinals. As the senior players walked around the field after the game, for most of them the realization that this will be the last football game they played began to take hold.
The tough part was that State College had beaten Harrisburg earlier this year, but that was no consolation for them in the emotions of the moment.
Every football season is a journey lasting from one season to the next. When you’re 16, 17 or 18 years old, that yearlong course of offseason workouts, preseason practices and the bumps, bruises and aches from playing football seem like an eternity.
You invest your heart and soul. You buy in and commit to one another. Teams and friendships are forged through common cause and shared sacrifice.
And then each week you put it out there. You suit up and go see what you have versus the other guy. Ultimately there will be a final score, with a winner and someone who came up short. There will be disappointment. And in the trash-talking taunting world of social media, it isn’t always easy to put yourself out there to be judged by people who never stood up to compete for anything.
In high school football, each team is only together for one season. There are no contract extensions. And while in high school each season’s journey seems long in the moment, when it does end, you realize how fast it all went by.
And when you make the playoffs, the end can come in a moment. As you prepare for each playoff game you dare not think that it could ever end; you never prepare for it.
But it happens. The guys finish the season and go their separate ways into life’s next chapter after high school.
And as the season is over, those Friday night lights are gone. The time of seeming immortality starts to fade a bit with the sunrise of each new dawn. As one season ends, for the coach the journey starts anew. On the depth chart a name comes down and a new one goes up. It is always a poignant moment as a coach.
In eight short months, a new team will take the field.
But for those guys walking off the field one last time on a team with 13 wins and one loss, it will be the one loss that seems to hang over all for some time.
I know. There are plays from losses, calls that I made as a coach 15 or 20 years ago that remain vividly haunting to this day.
It hurts. But that’s a good thing. The more it hurts, the more invested you were, the more you gave your heart and soul to the team. Most people are afraid to risk that kind of hurt in pursuit of excellence and because of that they never ascend any heights in life.
But you must value the noble journey. We don’t celebrate the journey, or the effort enough. Society’s interest only in the wins and losses and its race to taunt and troll a vanquished opponent should have no place in sports. Teams who prepare and fight and compete are never truly defeated.
What I can say to this team and other teams like it is this: with time you’ll realize that a season was never only about the wins and losses. Certainly, the goal was to win, but it was about so much more. It was about shared time and goals, about the connections you make, the love for one another and the ties that will bind you together for decades to come.
And when a solitary defeat brings a season to an end, the disappointment of not quite getting to the ultimate goal will seem an inescapable shadow.
With time comes wisdom and with wisdom comes perspective. And with perspective you will come to a point when you think about the 13 wins far more than the one loss in what was an incredible season.
You will remember a September night going for two to win on the road. You will remember a district championship, a three-overtime win on a snowy field and a complete game performance the next week. You’ll remember the things your coaches told you, the things you learned about your teammates and about yourselves. You’ll remember funny nicknames you had for each other. You’ll even remember what you ate on bus trips home.
Those memories and the smiles they bring will be what first comes to your mind—because they represent the 13 and not the one.
As time’s march takes you into new roles and in new lives, a part of you will always be rooted in that season, will always be anchored in what you did as a team and what you did together. There will come a moment when your first thought of this team and season will be amid the glow of Friday night lights on the smiling faces of your youthful pursuit of gridiron glory.
And that is the ultimate victory, that is the 13 over the one.
