High school football embraces everything good about sports (Especially when Corning wins)
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et’s get this right out in the open. There’s a reason 12 pages separate me from that guy in the Red Bluff High jersey on Page 6. Come this time of year, the alumni of these schools don’t always get along, and if we had Corning Cardinal red-and-white on a page facing Spartan green, it might get … messy. Things are friendly enough around the office between editor Chace Bryson and myself 51 weeks out of the year, but come the week of Sept. 16, we’ll have our game faces on. That’s the week of the annual “Tehama County Shootout,” when our respective alma maters square off in the 29th installment of a rivalry that resumed in 1983. It’s a night when I’ll swap dozens of texts with people at Cardinal Field. Depending on the outcome, we’ll complain about the officiating, demand the return of Gary Burton as coach or (in all likelihood) toast the Cardinals for once again whipping the bigger school from the north. All around Northern California, fans can relate. Whether it’s San Ramon Valley against Monte Vista in Danville, Encinal vs. Alameda on the island, Antioch and Pittsburg in the “Little Big Game” — which gets played on a Friday night under the lights in 2011 for the first time in many years — or even Taft vs. Bakersfield (remember “The Best of Times?” Reno Hightower and the White Shoes?), your No. 1 high school football rivalry is something that stays with you for the rest of your life. Even if you never wore the colors. The picture represents the first and only time I’ve donned the Cardinals football jersey. (I figured out at a very young age I was much better suited to packing a clipboard than breaking up a wedge.) Thus the chest-puffing. Some might call it a big gut. It’s a puffed-out chest. Honest. As is the case with any great rivalry, I think a bet is in order. If Corning wins, Chace needs to wear the Cardinal jersey. If Red Bluff wins — well, no way I’d fit into his jersey, so I guess I’d just have to hang the Spartans jersey on the back of my chair, where it would probably end up on the floor. So, for me, it’s win-win. Anyway — here’s the point, and thank you for reaching it — there’s never been a better time to stop and appreciate just what our area offers in high school football.
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SportStars™
August 25, 2011
WALLY’S WORLD Mike Wolcott MikeW@ SportStarsOnline.com (925) 566-8500 Ext. 109
The Bay Area, and all of Northern California, represents the best of the best of the game. The record book proves it (thank you, De La Salle-Concord, Escalon, Bellarmine Prep-San Jose and Folsom — all state champions a year ago), the legends prove it and, especially, the atmosphere proves it. Whether you’re enjoying the fans (and the food) at Pittsburg, or marveling at the unmatched efficiency on the field at De La Salle, or (if I can get away with one more hometown plug) visiting with the hundreds of alumni who proudly return to Corning for Homecoming every year — yes, in Corning, the “H” is always upper-case — high school football offers the best, and safest, fan experience on the planet right now. Is it really even up for debate? In terms of quality of play, or entertainment value, or price, or (especially) safety? Not when you compare it with what’s happening with pro football in the Bay Area. At a meaningless exhibition game between the 49ers and Raiders (two teams that, between them, haven’t won an important game in the past decade), two people were shot in the parking lot, another was badly beaten in a restroom and there were dozens of fights. Sound like a nice way to spend an evening with your family, especially with a price tag resembling a good-sized mortgage payment? There is a better option, and chances are it’s right down the street from your home. High school football — played by faster, more-athletic and game-savvy players that at any time in the game’s history — has never been more entertaining. And the atmosphere is still unlike anything else in sports. This is true in Sacramento, and Pleasanton, and Fremont, and Berkeley, and everywhere else SportStars Magazine is distributed. In an age where more and more people are turned off to the ugly side of professional sports, we are proud to help remind people why they fell in love with the game in the first place. The game’s the thing. And the players. Here, we will continue to celebrate the positive achievements of high school athletics, in the best place in the land to do it. Unless you see me walking around with my gut squeezed into an undersized Red Bluff High jersey later next month. That would just be wrong. ✪
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