Thursday night lights

Highway 277 out of Wichita Falls, Texas deviates little from a straight line enroute to the southwestern horizon. The scrub mesquite that mottles both sides of the highway does little to obstruct the view to the earth’s edge. Civilization is sparse, too, with towns blossoming in the middle of nowhere every two to three dozen miles.

In these hinterlands, six-man football thrives.

Six-man football is to sport what George Gobel was to Johnny Carson, the pair of brown shoes amidst a sea of tuxedoes. If a town’s high school fields a six-man team, it has already submitted to the fact that it doesn’t have the population to put up an eleven-man team. No pretense. No arrogance. No flash. The townsfolk are thrilled just to have a team of their own to cheer for. The kids delight at being able to play.

Private schools play this game, too. Often situated in towns and cities permeated by eleven-man teams, the private schools will travel one hundred miles to find and play another six-man team. Thursday night, our journey was just shy of that.

This is what sport is meant to be. No colossal stadiums like those which dot Texas’ major metropolitan areas. Few lads are vying for scholarships at UT or Tech. No marching bands with choreographed displays that would wow USC. Six rows of aluminum bleachers for the visitors, always facing into the setting sun. Two extra rows provided for the home team and crowned with a plywood press box that fits three observers on metal folding chairs. A six button push-pad controls the scoreboard, and a microphone that’s 50-50 keeps you apprised of what you just saw. And since the season has just begun, most of the stadium lights are still in working order.

Knox City’s football field sits on the east end of town. Its water tower could be seen from ten miles away, and despite the fact that the sun had an hour and a half left before its 100-degree presence would no longer be felt, the stadium lights twinkled above the Mesquite-line just north of the highway.

As I pulled into the visitor’s parking lot, my six-year old daughter exclaimed, “Look at the animals!” On the side of the lot away from the field was a home, and between the home and the lot, the family kept their critters. Goats. Dozens of them, all ear-tagged as though ready for showing at the county fair. They shared their pen with a handful of chickens and a donkey that delighted in chasing the goats around their enclosure.

Six-man football is a wide-open game played on a field 20 yards shorter and only 13 yards less wide than a traditional field. While the penalties for the most part remain the same, the actual play takes most of its cues from backyards and playgrounds. Everyone is eligible to catch the ball. The running holes are massive. Quickness and agility are a must. Size, while nice, is not nearly so important.

Both teams, Knox City and Christ Academy from Wichita Falls, sported new uniforms and looked sharp and proud on the sidelines as their captains measured one another during the pregame coin-toss.

From our perch at midfield, the brambled plains stretched out to touch the sky to the north and the south. Towering thunderstorms miles away circled the stadium and stoodd as massive gray sentinels to the game. As the sun set, they provided an awesome canvas on which maroons and oranges and indigos complemented the navies and the crimsons on the field.

Few ticks have dropped off the eight-minute first quarter before the scoreboard portended the coming touchdown torrent for Christ Academy. We munched homemade sandwiches. Others dipped into gloppy nacho dip from the snack bar. The cheerleaders belted out their script on both sides of the field often oblivious to what was going on between the sidelines. The American flag stood out with pride and pleasure in a place of prominence at the north end of the field for young men were cutting their teeth on the fields of friendly conflict while real men gave their all in fields of battle thousands of miles away.

At the end of three quarters, the game was mercifully called. The equivalence of Little League’s ten-run rule had been met. The teams shook hands at midfield, after which Christ Academy gathered in a circle, arms around shoulder pads, and thanked God for safety and for sport, for esprit and for His Spirit.

As we drove through the darkness to get my little girls home and into bed, I wondered if this game would even find its way into the next day’s paper. It’s football season, and eleven-man rules the night in Wichita Falls. No matter, really. Few who were there will forget the splendor and beauty of the first game of the season, and it had little to do with the score. The specifics of the game will soon fade for both teams and for all the fans, but the character and experience honed on that sun-scorched gridiron will last a lifetime.

Such is the glory of six-man football in north Texas.