As one who experienced difficulty in putting down high-school roots, as it were, becoming a lifelong fan of the Kellogg (Idaho) Wildcats, the Gonzaga Prep (Washington) Bullpups, and the Lynwood (California) Knights football teams came with the territory. Later geographical relocations would add the Park City Miners and Wasatch Wasps to that list.
Not that I follow the ever-cyclic fortunes of any of them as much as I would like. With Kellogg, Gonzaga Prep, and Lynwood, keeping tabs on their chaotic seasons most often entails logging on to websites of The Spokesman Review in Spokane for updates on the first two and the Los Angeles Times for the third.
What do you want first, the good news or the bad news? Well, the bad news is that two of the three lost their games last week. Kellogg traveled up north in the Idaho panhandle to Bonners Ferry, the capital of Baja British Columbia, where the Badgers roundly thumped the visiting Wildcats 49 to 13.
That’s beautiful country, awash in lakes and forests, up around Bonners Ferry. Traveling to any of the towns in the Idaho panhandle to take on a sports rival is not tough duty. Trips to Wallace, Mullan, Couer d’Alene, Sandpoint, and St. Maries are equally rewarding, no matter the outcome.
Things went somewhat better for Gonzaga Prep last Friday. After pretty much shutting down the Mead Panthers at home during the first half, they lost 17-13. Although Jesuits never take defeat all that well, they were probably able to put it in perspective, it being only their second loss of the season. Yeah, right!
The campus at Kellogg High School was brand new and the one at Gonzaga Prep only a few years old during the years I spent stompin’ those respective grounds. There were huge differences in the settings, of course. Spokane had all the trappings of a smaller version of Salt Lake City, while Kellogg, a mining town not totally unlike Park City, had more of a rural sensibility. And although they were just beginning a home-and-home relationship in basketball back in those days, there’s no recollection of them ever squaring off against each other on the gridiron.
Now to the third high school of my misspent youth. That would be Lynwood, part of the megalopolis that is Los Angeles and nestled — maybe splattered would be better — amid the sprawl of southeast-central L.A. It made up for not having a winning football tradition by flaunting itself as the “Gateway to Compton.”
Road trips to Lakewood, Downey, Bellflower, Paramount, and Compton had little in the form of sweeping vistas to offer. In their place were what had come to be known a few years previous — in such fine cinema fare as “Blackboard Jungle” and “Rebel Without a Cause” — as “rumbles.”
The after-game parties, however, brought different variables to the table and the beaches were nearby. It may have been a jungle out there but, all in all, not a bad backdrop for winding up the high school years.
And that brings us to the Park City and Wasatch high schools and their annual get-together on either one or the other’s field of pigskin dreams. This year — tomorrow at dusk, actually — the longtime rivalry will be resumed over in Hebertown at the usual scene of the crime with the usual suspects filling both stands.
One could assume, of course, that there’s a twenty-five percent annual turnover in the collective fan-base as the parents and friends of the current graduating class exit stage left and are replaced by those of the next group, younger and not yet indifferent to it all.
For one who has only peripherally followed the Miners and the Wasps this year, I certainly am ready for kickoff. According to beat writers from The Park Record, the Wasatch Wave, and the Salt Lake Tribune, the Park City team is capable of rushing the ball down your throat while Wasatch has a passing attack that has yet to be grounded.
Neither squad appears to be taking any prisoners lately with Park City’s triple option ringing up over 130 points in its last two games while Wasatch scored over 100 during the same timeframe.
No doubt about it, this is a big week! With Dylan last Monday out on the banks of the Great Salt Lake, Ken Sanders waxing on Ed Abbey tonight kicking off the Salt Lake Book Festival, the “Showdown at Sundown” between Park City and Wasatch tomorrow evening in Heber, and, for us lit-freaks, all day Saturday at the Bookfest. That’s the good news!
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.