Saturday Night Lights

Last night was the first high school football game of the year. For some reason, they have games on some Saturday nights in addition to regular Friday night games. I'm not keen on Sat night games, but since Angel #2 has to play in the band for the games, we figured we might as well go. Our kids go to the biggest high school on the island and usually our football team dominates the games, which doesn't make for interesting football. Yeah, it's fun to see your team win, but it's always better when there's some question as to who will ultimately come out on top. But, this wasn't a regular season game and they played a visiting team from Maui instead of the usual big islanders. It was a good game, even if we got trounced 18-8. Angel #2 was happy, since she was rooting for the visitors - apparently, the guys on their team were cuter than the ones on her own high schools team. Yep, there's a bit of a lack of school loyalty going on. She said the biggest cheer the band let out was during a time-out when the band director tossed a peanut into the stands and managed to get it into some kids saxophone.

As usual, the best part of the game (imo anyway) is at the end of the game when the whole team lines up in front of the stands, holds hands and sing the school song for the crowd. This is followed up by the Haka. Here's a clip from last years homecoming.

I'm guessing you don't get that at the end of a football game on the Mainland - I know we didn't in MY hometown anyway. Another benefit of Hawaii football is that you go wearing shorts and flip flops instead of the winter coat, sweater, 3 pair of socks, mittens and other paraphernalia required for a Wisconsin high school football game. Going to HS games back then as a kid was fun, but there's no way you'd find me at one of those now if I needed to dress up like I was going on a voyage to the Artic Circle. I like watching my football as comfortably as possible, thank you very much.