BHS had football!
by Jodie and Arlin Bolig
My son plays trumpet in the marching band in Tempe, Arizona. He’s a senior now, and I’ll admit, the years have flown by all too fast. In eighth grade he auditioned for a spot in the band (not just anyone can march for Corona del Sol!) I knew he’d be really disappointed if he weren’t chosen, so each day, I avoided asking for the results. Then, one day I picked him up from school and he said “better get used to 5 am wake up calls!” He was in, and so were we. We were in for summer band camps, fall band camps, competitions, out of state trips, Disneyland, Knox Berry Farm, Las Vegas and more. We were in for early rehearsals (I wasn’t kidding, we set the alarm for 5am!), night rehearsals, busses, finger-printing parents, and passing out gallons and gallons of water on hot Arizona nights. We were in for learning terms like “superior with distinction” and “all captions”. We were in for wearing yellow shirts so the kids would see a “sea of yellow” as they looked up in the stands. But best of all, we were in for Friday night football. I expected all that, but I didn’t expect the nostalgia for BHS football.
Now, in this, my fourth year as a Band Booster, I’m sitting in the stands wearing my yellow shirt, and through casual conversation, I discover another students’ mom is married to….a Barbertonian! That’s just how small this world really is. So of course, I have to look him up and we talk all things Barberton for the next few outings. (The first topic is always chicken dinners) In fact, once my family was way up on top of Kitt Peak, (the highest point in southern AZ) and we run into some Ohioans, so I bring up Barberton and the gal says “Oh we LOVE the chicken dinners!” Sheesh, But, I digress…The Barberton Dad tells me about the old high school being torn down and the BHS website, and we’re watching AZ football and he says, “It’s just not football when it’s not purple ‘n white”. That’s when I realize exactly what it is that is missing from football in Arizona.
I moved to Arizona in 1977. After I married, we lived not far from a high school. I thought it would be like “home”, where I could hear the band practice in the summer, hear the crowd roar on Friday nights, hear the home score announced with a boom of fireworks. All the things that football season brings in Barberton. I remember I loved to listen to the BHS band from my bedroom window, all the way up on Lloyd Street. I remember the purple ticket booth on Norton Ave was always swamped at game time. Everyone at school wore a purple ribbon on game day with a spirit slogan like “Hammer Hogan”! I remember fall colors were “purple and white”! Here, well, it was not like Barberton, where the whole town turns out for the game, knows the score, and the key plays are discussed all week long until there’s another game to discuss the next week. AT BHS, almost every classroom had teachers turned Monday-morning-quarterbacks! Cheerleaders actually cried if the team lost! Some nights, my son doesn’t even know who won the game! Barberton was a place where rivals were rivals all year long, not just in the fall. I can still name Massillon Tigers and other BHS’s rivals, and still sing the fight song: “oh BHS we will down them…” After four years, I have no clue which teams rival the CdS team in Arizona, and I don’t know if there are words to their fight song. These days, the band plays stand tunes, like “Sell Out” and “Rock Lobster” but every once in a while you still get to hear “na, na NA na,… na, na NA, na, hey-hey Good bye”.
As it turns out, Arizona football is pretty quiet. (You know, AZ Cardinals…yawn). I think, maybe it’s because there are no frosty mornings that the sound doesn’t carry further, so I never hear the bands in Arizona. Now that it’s almost November and the wake up temperature is 65, the sound from the high school does carry a little better. But, my son’s driving now, and he can set his own alarm clock for 5 am so I’m not hearing the band anyway. Maybe it’s that there are still no chilly, hot-chocolate-required game nights, that keeps the townspeople glued to TV’s instead of heading to the stadiums. Maybe football requires fall weather to be football! All I know is, BHS had football and it was exciting and entertaining and all of a sudden, I miss it.
Joanne (Clark) Bollig
Class of ‘72
Tempe AZ