Not knowing any schools or good teams to look for, I found the local news station had dubbed the Reagan vs. Churchill game to be the Game of the Week. Sounded good to us! When I looked it up, Reagan "Rattlers" (who would want a snake for thier mascot?!) were ranked #4. Churchill "Chargers" ranked #6. Sounded like a good game to me!
***Sidenote***
Reagan High School "Rattlers" have roughly 2500 students in the 9-12 grade.
Churchill High School "Chargers" have roughly 2900 students in the 9-12 grade.
So, not knowing fully what to expect, Kyle, Jason and I set out for the stadium. Football games are not played at the school. They are played at stadiums. The one we went to is brand-spankin' new. Heroes Stadium. It opened in 2009 and is owned by the North East Independant School District of San Antonio. The stadium is "home" field for 7 schools. It offers track, football, and soccer. Capacity roughly 12,000 spectators.
Just pulling into the paring lots our jaws dropped. This is what we saw. First round of reminding ourselves that this is HIGH SCHOOL.
Not even thinking, I had picked a random t-shirt that was red, and it had London, England on it with the England flag. As we pull into the parking lot, we see a sea of red and green. Great. I picked one of the school colors. That was O.K. though, it helped us decided which side to sit on! (Ironically enough, when they scored touchdowns, they ran they England flag across the field. I fit right in!)
As we chose seats in the middle of all these parents...we started looking around.
This stadium was HUGE. It is hard to put into words, and the pictures don't do it enough justice. I looked at the bleachers across the field- one whole section was dedicated to band/cheerleaders/dancers. Not students. These schools are bigger than my home town!
This stadium was HUGE. It is hard to put into words, and the pictures don't do it enough justice. I looked at the bleachers across the field- one whole section was dedicated to band/cheerleaders/dancers. Not students. These schools are bigger than my home town!The football players were taller than the coaches, I can only imagine what their height/weight were. (The programs were $5, I didn't want to spend that on a program). Here we needed to remind ourselves again that this was HIGH SCHOOL.
The game proved to be tightly matched- it was 7-7 for the longest time. After seeing all the action of the first half, we were pumped to see the half-time show! All I can say in recap of it, it put the NDSU half time show to shame. The band was unreal. The dancers amazing. The flag girls rocked. The drumline could rival the movie "Drumline" without haveing to fast-forward clips. I think my jaw was dropped the entire half-time show. BOTH schools put on an amazing show. I found myself thinking this was still HIGH SCHOOL.
Here are some pictures of the field itself:
Needless to say, I was in awe as I watched the night unfold. I found it funny as well that I was HOT sitting at the football game as my little sister froze, dressed in about 8 layers, also watching high school football. We ended up leaving at the end of the 3rd quarter only to find out the next morning the game went into overtime with a final score of 35-34, Reagan won. It was a great first experience of TX High School Football!
p.s. This makes me want to take a roadtrip to where they based the movie Friday Night Lights...in Odessa, TX. Someday.
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