Saturday was a monumental day in the history of St. Joe's. They have had a lot of tradition over the years but 50 years had also come and passed with one element missing and that was a football team.
Football amongst all American sports may be the one with the biggest cultural impact. Personally, it has surpassed baseball as the biggest American past time. Many other countries play baseball as seen in the Little League World Series, the World Baseball Classic, the Olympics and more, but football has remained a tradition undoubtedly permeated into American blood and theirs alone. Football is a very interesting sport if you are trying to correlate it to Americana. It has elements that define America and others that doesn't. Things such as teamwork, hard work, determination, competitiveness and desire to be the best are things that define football as well as the characteristics that define people living in America. A crucial area that I find football to be greatly contradictory towards Americana is while it is a very competitive sport, football probably more than any other sport relies on teamwork. There are very, very few football teams who have won Super Bowls on the back of one or two players. I don't believe it is like that in other sports. Kobe was by far the best player on the Lakers last year and they won a championship. It usually only takes two good players in the NBA to win a title. Football, it takes the entire team. In the American workplace, from the time we're born pretty much, we're trained to be cutthroat and to be selfish and do things for your own self-interest. It is not like that in football. You cannot put your own self-interest over the teams. If you do, you are doomed to fail.
Football has an ability to connect and unite a community that other sports do not. In the movie Rudy, many people of the Notre Dame community started chanting his name because they knew about his story and all that he had done to get to where he was at Notre Dame. In the book, Friday Night Lights, a team in rural Texas, named the Permian Panthers out of Odessa has their 1988 season chronicled and that book talks about the significance of High School football in their small town. High school football has by far the most players of the 4 major American sports and I think that increases its popularity significantly. I think it is so popular because it has the ability to unite small and large communities. High school football is a very social event as it is a time for parents to meet and talk about different things with other parents as well as root their kids on in a field of play. There is a bunch of other things going on as well--selling school/team merchandise, the cheerleaders/marching band, fundraisers and more that all help the school as well as the town. If one wants to interpret football on a deeper level, one could also see high school football as a game in which boys are coming of age. Parents are seeing their boys become men in the blink of an eye by playing a violent game such as football. Besides something like war, it is one of the most masculine things out there one could possibly participate in, so I think this element of parents watching their kids grow up by playing a game like football is also particularly why the game has had such a big impact in America.
St. Joe's first home game in their history was against Cushing Academy of Ashburnham, Massachusetts. Cushing is a town located in Central Massachusetts in Worcester County, near the Vermont border and have an enrollment of 445 students. They went 3-4 last year and 4-3 the year before and were clearly a step up in competition from St. Joe's previous 2 opponents. Looking at their roster, they had tons of players from outside Massachusetts and they looked to be a pretty good football team. It's also important to mention that Cushing had 12 fifth-year seniors. They will likely be the toughest team St. Joe's play like Athletic Director Jerry Smith said in week 1. St. Joe's remaining 5 games are at Blair Prep, home against Moore Catholic, at Cedar Creek, home against Morristown-Beard and Montclair Kimberley.
It started out to be a game of field position as St. Joe's and Cushing Academy started the game exchanging punts but Cushing in the 2nd quarter wound up taking control of this game. St. Joe's lost this game because they could not hold onto the ball when two of their drives started at the Cushing 9 and 25 or so. St. Joe's was outgained 158-21 in the first half and wound up quickly falling behind 20-0.
Now St. Joe's could have easily packed it in after falling behind so much, but they hung in there keeping the game within 3 touchdowns. Within a few minute span in the 4th quarter, St. Joe's had found themselves down 6 after Albert Myers 55 yard touchdown reception and Matt Greene's 29-yard fumble return for a touchdown. This livened up the crowd and for a moment, it looked like a realistic possibility that St. Joe's might be able to come back and win this game.
Those hopes were quickly put out though when Cushing scored 2 touchdowns in the next 3 minutes to go onto a 34-21 victory. In Greg Tufaro of the Home News Tribune's article, Cushing Academy coach Wayne Clarke said "Their kids worked hard, they were very well-coached and very well-disciplined. They've got a bright future ahead of them. I was very impressed with the team, but the atmosphere was the best part for me. You know, this is high school football. You've got the school backing you, and all these people out here supporting the kids. They did a terrific job today."
The environment was awesome. It was something I would have loved to have played in if they had football when I was a student at St. Joe's. They played the game with the backdrop being a bunch of old evergreen trees and an older group of train tracks. My big complaint would be there was nowhere near enough bleachers to hold everyone, granted since it was the first game, they might have had a lot more people than usual. More than 1,000 people attended the game which was a number bigger than I expected. I felt the atmosphere was kind of like a fairgrounds area--where people were socializing with each other, hamburgers and hotdogs being grilled and the smell of that filling the field and more. I think the backdrop of the game only further helped that comparison. A lot of people seemed to be anticipating this game and I think St. Joe's did a great job of celebrating the event with their cocktail reception and mass after the game, bringing Brother Robert on beforehand to do the cointoss, doing a game program and selling merchandise already, etc. It was a cool environment and like I said, all of this is why high school football is the premier spectator sport amongst all high school sports. School president Larry Walsh said in Greg Tufaro's article, "More than just a football game, it's a celebration. It brings people together, the whole school community."
Cushing's kicker looked great and was clearly division 1 quality. His kicking negated many potential returns and that helped limit the damage St. Joe's could potentially do with Myers and Jimerson being neutralized in that particular area. As seen in games this year, they have been a dangerous duo so by not being able to return kicks because of Dom Kozlowski's strong leg, that really hurt them. Seven of the Falcons last eight possessions started at the 20-yard line because of touchbacks. Jimerson made the final look a little more respectable when he had an 88-yard run with 11 seconds to go in regulation. Cushing also did a great job of stopping St. Joe's running game which played pretty well in the first couple weeks. The Falcons turnovers were a major disservice to the game and wound up costing them here. Had they been able to put in the touchdowns which they started on the 9 and 25 yard lines of Cushing, this could have been a different game.
As it stands, the Falcons are now 2-1 and have outscored their opponents so far 88-56. Their next game should be a fun one as it is their lone night game this year up in Northwestern New Jersey off of Route 80 at Blair Prep. This will be another one of St. Joe's bigger tests so it will be interesting to see if they can bounce back after a loss. The middle stretch of the schedule is the toughest, so if they can get past the first couple weeks of October unscathed, maybe, just maybe, the Falcons can end up with a 7-1 record. We'll see what happens next week.
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