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The Wish of Every Former Footballer?
Just one more game is something we’ll spend our life chasing
Forty years ago, on a cold November night, I played my final snap of high school football.
The Bermuda grass at Rash Stadium in Owensboro, Ky., had turned a muddy brown and it was a meaningless football game between two .500 teams. There was nothing memorable for the scattering of fans — mostly family and friends — spread out along the metal bleachers. The game was one of those “three handoffs and a punt” and the final score was 7–0.
But the memories of that game, and others before it, remain all these years later.
Recently, on a cold November night, my alma mater accomplished something that had never been done in the school’s 60 years of existence: advance to a state championship football game. Not just to win a state crown, but to make an appearance in the title game.
That’s pretty heady stuff for a Western Kentucky community of 16,000 mostly made up of farmers and coal miners. Good country folk, you see.
From afar, I’ve followed the fortunes of the 2024 Union County High School football team as they eventually finished with a 12–3 record and an appearance in the Class 3A state final.