Chapter 19

Cole turned up the intensity in practice, pushing the boys harder than he had all season. The sessions were physical with lots of hitting. They would hit, hit some more then finish up with more hitting. Cole hadn’t been pleased with many areas of his team and pushed them to the limit early in the week.

During the offensive session, Cole split the snaps between Gary and Lucky. The Panthers scrimmaged full-speed for three days, continuing until everybody was spent, including the coaches.

Despite the grueling practices, Cole was pleased with the players’ response. They didn’t like losing either, especially with Hodgen and the district part of the schedule coming up. If this was what it took to get on the winning track, then so be it. The practices were hard, but not nearly as bad as losing.

As he watched the offense practice, Cole noticed the team was sharper with Lucky at quarterback. This gave the Panthers a chance to throw the ball when opponents stacked their defense, and hopefully burn them.

Cole also gave Andy some snaps at flanker, alternating with Harry. Andy also worked at tight end but seemed to fit in better out wide.

All the Panthers were still fairly healthy going into the Hodgen game even after the beating from Reichert. The players’ confidence was down so the coaches spent a lot of time boosting them, assuring them they were good players on a good team. But Cole knew this wasn’t a good time to play Hodgen. The other coaches and players knew it also, pretty much everybody did except for the fans, who expected a Petros win.

Wednesday was Hump Day for the Petros football team, just like it was for the working people throughout the world. It meant the Panthers had survived the really difficult part of the week as far as practices were concerned, and the intensity would lessen drastically.

It also marked the day “The Petros Weekly Herald”, featuring Sports Editor Jack “Scoop” Peters, as it proudly boasted on the masthead, was published and hand delivered to the Petros coaches by none other than the same Scoop Peters.

Petros’ residents were just thankful the Herald didn’t put his picture along with the ad. Stub said it was because they knew Scoop’s picture on the front page would hurt circulation.

The coaches were in their office when Scoop came barging in. He was dressed in his customary outfit of black clothing from head to toe. He also wore a frown on his face, distressed by his Panthers’ start along with having to play Hodgen this week.

Scoop handed each coach a newspaper then sat down in the chair he considered his, even chasing the players out of if they made the mistake of sitting in it when he wanted to.

Cole and Ichabod muttered their thanks and started glancing through the paper, mainly to try and make Scoop feel better.

“What is this crud?” asked Stub.

“It’s the newspaper!” Scoop responded, falling into the trap.

“Is it worth reading this week?”

“Of course!” Scoop answered, then blew his nose with a black handkerchief and jammed it back in his shirt pocket.

“Did you write anything in here?”

“Of course!”

“I guess I can take it home and put it on the floor for my puppy to pee on.”

Scoop was hurt. He put way too much work into his article for it to be treated as some potty-training device.

“I was just kidding,” added Stub, who saw the hurt look on Scoop’s face. “Did you use the spell check this time?”

“What’s a spell check?” asked Scoop.

Stub started looking at the newspaper, not bothering to respond. He turned through the newspaper, only pausing to glance at the divorces and see if any new females were added to the available list.

It was a short list, only three divorces and nobody he knew. Stub finally came to the sport’s page where he found a headline on top with big black letters in some weird font.

Our Panthers fall to Reichert!

Complete with explanation mark. Stub tried recalling if the Tulsa or Oklahoma City papers ever displayed this type of homerism, but didn’t remember seeing it.

The headline was enough to make everybody cringe. The actual story wasn’t much better.

Our brave and courageous Petros Panthers tumbled once again Friday against a bunch of bad sports from Reichert.

Cole was already shaking his head. Ichabod tried hiding his look of horror.

“What is this?” Stub asked.

Scoop looked a little hurt, the same way he usually did after spending time around Stub.

“You didn’t even mention my name in the first paragraph,” Stub stated.

“Uh, sorry,” Scoop stated. “Maybe I can next time.”

They continued reading the story.

Our boys played a great first half. We pushed the bad guys all over the field and would have been way ahead except the refs gypped us several times. In my opinion, those boneheads need to go back to officiating school, or wherever they came from. My grandmother has cataracts so big you could use them for saucers and she could call a game better than those morons!

Cole felt like he was going to get sick. That wasn’t going to earn many friends from the officiating community.

It was the kind of effort we have grown to expect from our heroes, our Panthers, pushing the enemies all over the field. Our great general, Cole Lester…

Cole had to stop when he saw that and shook his head.

“Did I misspell something again?” asked Scoop.

“No, I just don’t like being called the great general,” Cole responded.

Ichabod and Stub giggled over that one, not having gotten that far into the story.

“I felt like it was appropriate,” Scoop countered.

Cole didn’t really want to, but turned his attention back to the story.

…was showing why in my opinion that he is simply the greatest coach in the state, pushed all the right buttons and looked like a fine conductor orchestrating a breathtaking symphony.

Our stunning running back tandem of D.J. and Skip…

Cole noticed Scoop did not bother to put in their last names, another oddity he did not recall seeing in any other newspaper story.

…two very talented underclassmen, showed great promise running behind our brave and supremely talented offensive line.

Our Panthers roared on defense, shooting down those dreaded Birds, who I hope come down with some disease and fall out of their trees. But after such a great and heroic showing in the first half, something strange happened between the two halves. Reichert decided it wanted to play some football while our boys acted like it was time to take a nap.

Now this was a little strong from Scoop, showing that much frustration. It was true, of course, which made it harder to believe he actually wrote it.

That was about all the newspaper Cole could stand and he folded up the newspaper and sat it down on the corner of his desk, overcoming the urge to hit Scoop over the head with it.

“It looks like you weren’t fond of our play in the second half,” Stub pointed out, continuing to read. “Atrocious, awful and a malignant tumor? Isn’t that a little much?”

“I stand by my reporting,” Scoop countered, straightening up in his chair, half expecting a battle. “It was not the kind of performance I’ve come to expect from our Petros Panthers.”

Everybody looked at him, halfway expecting him to laugh. But Scoop was dead serious.

“You know, I talked to the reporter from the Hodgen newspaper this morning,” Scoop added, looking like he wanted to be congratulated.

The coaches said nothing, not worrying or caring what the reporter from Hodgen said. They could be watching film, drawing up plays, trimming their toe hairs, anything more constructive than this.

“He made me promise not to tell anybody, but the Hodgen coaches are already working on next week’s game,” Scoop stated.

“He made you promise this?” Ichabod asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“So you just broke a promise?” Stub asked.

“But it was just for you guys,” Scoop responded. “I won’t put it in my story this week. I have to live up to what I told him, you know.”

The three coaches looked at each other. If that was true, it was like a slap in the face. Had they slipped so far Hodgen took them for granted? But it also meant, if true, that the Bulldogs might not be ready to play.

“He also said the coaches were promising the subs they’d be playing by halftime since they were playing us,” Scoop added.

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The first fight of the week actually didn’t happen until Tuesday, easily surpassing the previous record. A few former Petros students ran into some Hodgen guys in a mall at Fort Smith.

They knew each other, of course, since they used to play against each other. But that didn’t mean they liked each other. It started off as a little joking, but gradually turned uglier, comments leading first to a shove, then, of course, punches followed. The mall cops rushed in to help, but were thrown around like rag dolls.

Fort Smith’s finest arrived quickly and while nobody was really injured in the brawl, aside from the mall cops, several young men had to call their parents to get bailed out of jail.

There were several other incidents, of course, some just fun and others a tad bit more malicious. Some Hodgen students snuck into Petros and spray painted obscenities on the brick walls of the high school. This wasn’t a great idea for a bunch of band guys, especially after several members of the Petros freshman football team caught them in the parking lot.

The Petros freshmen were not amused, going after the Hodgen kids “like stink on you-know-what” as Cole heard one of the kids describe it to another boy the following day. It convinced everybody who saw the outcome that band guys probably shouldn’t sneak on foreign territory to spray paint walls and especially get caught.

The only thing that saved a terrible beating was Petros’ police chief happened to be making the rounds. As he passed by the school, he saw around twenty Petros kids beating up a bunch of boys the police chief did not recognize. He stopped the fight fairly quick, but not before several Hodgen boys received a beating severe enough to place them on the injured list for Friday’s game.

Even the mayors of the two towns got into it at a countywide business meeting, blaming each other for all the problems. Hodgen’s mayor had a son who was one of the band members roughed up. Eventually he got worked up enough to throw a punch at Petros’ mayor. Unfortunately for him, his fighting skills were not much better than his son’s. Petros’ mayor easily ducked the punch and threw a haymaker of his own, only missing a TKO when the Hodgen mayor slipped on the tile and fell to the ground.

The representatives from the various industries invited to the conference to relocate to the county were not really impressed by the show of unity between the mayors and decided they might be better off somewhere else.

Cole had seen this type of behavior many times before, and actually used to be a part of it. Now, he felt like it seemed to get worse every year. If everybody else in town was going to lose their heads and do stupid stuff, that was their decision. There wasn’t anything he could do about it. But Cole could keep his guys out of it by declaring Hodgen off limits and telling them not to even step foot in the town.

On Thursday, the night before the game, there was a huge bonfire behind the bleachers at the football field. It was an annual tradition the night before playing Hodgen and had been going on since before Cole was born. There was a fake Bulldog thrown in the fire, of course, creating a huge roar.

All the players, coaches, cheerleaders, band members, students and parents showed up. There were even residents of Petros who didn’t have any association with the school showing up to see the spectacle.

They started the fire at five so when most people arrived, it was going good. The proud volunteers of the Petros Fire Department stood nearby with their fire truck just in case the fire got out of control.

Even if the people at the rally didn’t care about football, they would probably get fired up from the ceremony with the flames burning brightly in the dark sky. Everybody sang, clapped and cheered. The school song was played a little louder, with a little more effort from everybody.

Cole had a few seniors talk about the team and the game. Everybody then joined hands, forming a huge line and took off from the football field toward downtown and back to the school in a huge snake dance.

Cars and trucks joined the procession, honking horns with the people shouting support and giving their opinion of the Hodgen Bulldogs. The fire truck even joined in, blaring its horn.

It was such a display that it even got Cole choked up, something that didn’t happen often.

Chapter 20