They played the oddest game in high school football history last month down in Grapevine, Texas.
It
was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about
it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the
field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run
through.
Did you hear that? The other team’s fans?
even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said,
“Go Tornadoes!” Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.
It
was rivers running uphill and cats petting dogs. More than 200 Faith
fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville
players on by name.
“I never in my life thought I’d hear people
cheering for us to hit their kids,” recalls Gainesville’s QB and middle
linebacker, Isaiah. “I wouldn’t expect another parent to tell somebody
to hit their kids. But they wanted us to!”
And even though Faith
walloped them 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the
game they gave head coach Mark Williams a sideline squirt-bottle shower
like he’d just won state. Gotta be the first Gatorade bath in history
for an 0-9 coach.
But then you saw the 12 uniformed officers
escorting the 14 Gainesville players off the field and two and two
started to make four. They lined the players up in groups of
five, handcuffs ready in their back pockets, and marched them to the team
bus. That’s because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional
facility 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game it plays is on the road.
This
all started when Faith’s head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something
kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but
he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the
game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11
coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a
lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery, many of
whose families had disowned them, wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads
and ancient helmets.
So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our
fans, for one night only, cheered for the other team? He sent out an
email asking the Faithful to do just that. “Here’s the message I want
you to send:” Hogan wrote. “You are just as valuable as any other
person on planet Earth.”
Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan’s office and asked, “Coach, why are we doing this?”
And
Hogan said, “Imagine if you didn’t have a home life. Imagine if
everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would
mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you.”
Next
thing you know, the Gainesville Tornadoes were turning around on their
bench to see something they never had before. Hundreds of fans. And
actual cheerleaders!
“I thought maybe they were confused,” said
Alex, a Gainesville lineman (only first names are released by the
prison). “They started yelling ‘DEE-fense!’ when their team had the
ball. I said, ‘What? Why they cheerin’ for us?'”
It was a strange
experience for boys who most people cross the street to avoid. “We can
tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to the games,” says
Gerald, a lineman who will wind up doing more than three years. “You
can see it in their eyes. They’re lookin’ at us like we’re criminals.
But these people, they were yellin’ for us! By our names!”
Maybe
it figures that Gainesville played better than it had all season,
scoring the game’s last two touchdowns. Of course, this might be
because Hogan put his third-string nose guard at safety and his
third-string cornerback at defensive end. Still.
After the game,
both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray and that’s when
Isaiah surprised everybody by asking to lead. “We had no idea what the
kid was going to say,” remembers Coach Hogan. But Isaiah said this:
“Lord, I don’t know how this happened, so I don’t know how to say thank
You, but I never would’ve known there was so many people in the world
that cared about us.”
And it was a good thing everybody’s heads were bowed because they might’ve seen Hogan wiping away tears.
As
the Tornadoes walked back to their bus under guard, they each were
handed a bag for the ride home, a burger, some fries, a soda, some
candy, a Bible and an encouraging letter from a Faith player.
The
Gainesville coach saw Hogan, grabbed him hard by the shoulders and
said, “You’ll never know what your people did for these kids tonight.
You’ll never, ever know.”
And as the bus pulled away, all the
Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the
window, staring at these people they’d never met before, watching their
waves and smiles disappearing into the night.
Anyway, with the
economy six feet under and Christmas running on about three and a half
reindeer, it’s nice to know that one of the best presents you can give
is still absolutely free.
Hope.
