I know what intense competition is. My high school, Gate City, won the AA State Championship three times in the 1970s. My most vivid memory of those seasons is not the championship we won in my junior year, when I got to watch from the sidelines. It's the semifinal game we lost in Martinsville in November of my senior year. I was 17 years old, and although I'm embarrassed to admit it now, I thought for a few hours that I'd never get over it.
Scores linger in the memory like a good punt hangs in the sky.
My mom says we should have won by three touchdowns. They'll be saying that for years, around Gate City. I graduated and went off to college, where whole new worlds awaited me. Before I knew it, football seasons passed entirely without my seeing a single game. Now, though I drop into Adams Stadium to watch our Panthers when I can, I don't remember when I last saw a game all the way through.