By Preston Williams
Thursday, November 27, 2008
When Oakton football coach Joe Thompson told his players Saturday after their Virginia AAA Division 6 Northern Region championship win that they would be practicing on Thanksgiving, a hearty whoop filled the chilly air.
Every year when there is a good chance it will happen, Stone Bridge assistant Matt Griffis delivers a speech about how special it is to practice Thanksgiving morning.
Former West Potomac and Chantilly coach Dan Meier had a saying: "You want to be good on Labor Day. You want to be better on Columbus Day. But ultimately, what you want is to still be playing on Thanksgiving day."
It's true. Ask any high school football player or coach what the best practice of the year is, and chances are, if he has been fortunate enough to have the opportunity, he will say the Thanksgiving practice. No matter that he has to roll out of bed early on a holiday morning so late in the fall that spitting snow might have replaced kamikaze leaves.
If you're practicing today, you've had a great season and are deep into the playoffs, while most, if not all, other teams in your area have turned in their gear. You're the only fall sports team at your school still practicing, and the winter sports teams are still in preseason mode.
"Anybody you ask, or any kid you ask, would gladly give up Thanksgiving to have a chance to play to get to the state championship," said Woodbridge Coach Keith King, whose team had that experience last year but fell one game short of a Thanksgiving practice this season. It's, "Hey, guys, be thankful that you're playing, because there's a hundred other high schools that wish they were."
"I'd rather be [on the field] than home taking guts out of the turkey and chopping celery and all that crap," said Arundel Coach Chuck Markiewicz, whose team travels tomorrow to No. 5 Linganore. "That's a nice thing, but I'd rather be with my kids coaching football. Kids always play football on Thanksgiving. We're just dressed in our full gear and doing it."
There's just something about showing up at the field, on a school holiday, on a crisp morning, after months of more routine afternoon workouts, that fortifies an already deep bond among teammates and makes for a particularly spirited session.
The magnitude of the games is heightening, but amid the buildup of the week is this pocket of welcome isolation when the players have the school, and their shared aspirations, to themselves, like a band huddling backstage before walking on to greet 20,000 people.
Maybe it's like when a storm knocks out the power at home. You're hanging out with the same people, but there's something about familiar faces in flickering candlelight, or rummaging for flashlights to illuminate the mini-adventure, that makes the aura all the warmer and fuzzier.
"You have to mentally get up for a football practice, but this one is definitely an exception," said Stone Bridge senior linebacker Mike Olson, whose team will congregate today in preparation for its Virginia AAA Division 5 semifinal at Phoebus on Saturday. "Everyone comes in screaming and yelling the whole practice. The whole practice is all smiles. It's definitely a serious atmosphere, it's intense, but you get that feeling when you step out on that field with your gear. It's cold, but you forget about that because of the special occasion.
"Just being there on that day, you really don't care about getting up for practice, because it's with your boys."
Thanksgiving is a family-oriented day, of course, and as Olson hinted, many high school football players whose seasons are still alive have spent more time in recent months with their football family members than with their real ones. So seeing "your boys" on Thanksgiving feels as natural as seeing aunts and uncles and cousins around the dinner table.
After all, you must like one another a lot; otherwise, the team probably wouldn't have been cohesive enough to advance this far. And former teammates also are in town and might drop by practice or attend the coming game.
"It's just a good feeling to see all the old guys come back and show how much of a good program we had," said Arundel senior receiver Alec Lemon, whose team will be practicing today for the second Thanksgiving in a row, with a Maryland 4A semifinal at Linganore tomorrow night. "There are a couple guys that come back for homecoming and Senior Night and stuff, but for Thanksgiving, everyone's back on break unless they're playing a [college] sport."
Some schools, such as Westfield and River Hill, put out a huge Thanksgiving breakfast spread prepared by team parents. Meier, now the principal at Robinson, was more of a king-size doughnut and hot chocolate man for his teams' seven Thanksgiving workouts.
When Meier's former school, Chantilly, was going to practice on Thanksgiving two years ago, he e-mailed Chargers Coach Mike Lalli to express how special those Thanksgiving practice memories are to him, and perhaps to encourage a younger coach to make sure to relish the experience.
"Most great teams develop a sense of family," Meier said. "Really, as a coach, it's not so much that a loss in the playoffs ends your season. It disbands your family. To be practicing on Thanksgiving, you have the morning with your football family and the afternoon with your biological family."
Wilde Lake Coach Doug DuVall bypassed practice one Thanksgiving so his team could hand out food in Baltimore. Now, to underscore the significance of the day, he asks his players to go home after the Thanksgiving practice and call a relative they have not spoken to in a long time. Who knows, it might be a relative they would have otherwise seen if not for the Thanksgiving practice.
Parents in powerhouse programs generally know not to make Thanksgiving travel plans. But sometimes players and parents are surprised to learn that their team will be practicing on Thanksgiving.
DuVall recalls this exchange between players from several years back:
"If we have practice on Thanksgiving," one asked, "what do we do about Thanksgiving dinner?"
"Don't worry," a teammate replied. "KFC is open until 5 o'clock."
Varsity Letter is a weekly column about high school sports in the Washington area. E-mail Preston Williams at williamsp@washpost.com.
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