Another Round at the Say When: High School Football's Walking Wounded
A journalist moves to the small town of McDermitt, on the Oregon-Nevada line, to learn about why the high school football team never wins, and about the townsfolk who cheer them on, no matter what.
One in a series.
The freshman football player named Jaxson is alway the first to arrive.
Standing under goal posts stained with bird droppings, out amid the sagebrush and creosote, he tosses the oval ball into the air, waiting for his team.
At age 15, he’s funeral-home quiet, barely saying a word, even to the other players, his voice a whisper when the older boys call out their drills.
"Call out, Jaxson," they tell him. "You've got a voice. Use it!"
At a mere 137 pounds, with bird-like legs, shoulders hunched, his head swimming inside his helmet, he isn't one of those strapping kids you'll see playing varsity sports in many towns across America.
But for the Football Team That Never Wins, Jaxson is the future.
He’s gangly but quick, and coaches Richard Egan and Jack Smith hope he can eventually pose a missing downfield threat in this season’s Bulldog offense.
They want to avoid another spring debacle, where McDermitt high school went a dismal 0-4, failing to score even a touchdown, managing a single two-point safety as their total scoring output, shellacked by a final tally of something resembling 250-2.
Richard stood tall and consoled his boys, their heads low, “We are who we are.”
But he knows they’re better that that.
Each autumn, the overmatched team represents the tiny town of McDermitt in a the autumnal rite of high school football, where the townsfolk line their trucks and vans along the field and root on kids they’ve known since birth.
Located on the Nevada-Oregon border, with a population of only a few hundred, McDermitt is so isolated the law takes two hours just to get here.
Need to visit a grocery store? See a doctor or have your car repaired? Well, in that case, you need to drive south 74 miles to Winnemucca, a pass-through town along Interstate 80 whose claim to fame is a faint mention in a Hank Snow country-western song.
And the Walmart Superstore there, located on Potato Place, out of view of the Interstate, is the answer to every rural family’s prayers, a temple of durable goods where you can find just about anything, and for a comparatively reasonable price.
"I know you’d rather be wandering down in the Walmart,” Richard tells his team, “but you’ve got to practice to win.”
In McDermitt, you can get gas, pay highway robbery prices at the gas station market, visit the post office and order a beer and a burger at the Say When casino.
Through both death and economic attrition, more people leave here than arrive.
And there’s absolutely nothing to do for a 16-year-old boy. No community center, no public swimming pool. Football gives teens a chance to break the hum-drum rural routine.
Still, when football practice began in mid-August, the Bulldogs counted only six able-bodied players. Less than a month before the first game, they don’t have enough boys to compete in their 8-man-football league.
But Richard eyes his cards like a veteran gambler: He’s not out yet.
Luke, his senior starting quarterback, is still away on vacation and his Great Sophomore Hope, a bulky Rez kid named Karter, transferred from out of town with experience in the state’s best big-city league.
But Karter threw out his knee in the first practice is now day-to-day.
To make matters worse, Hess says he may be ineligible to play sports for 180 days — the entire football and basketball season — because he has moved in with his grandparents while his father travels out of town.
A rule designed to stop Nevada’s urban football powers from moving top prospects into their district — often in relatives’ homes — as a ploy to to add talent and stack the deck, has had unintended consequence.
It’s not hurting Nevada’s most unlikely powerhouse ever, a runt of a rural team in the state’s smallest league, bereft of players, now scrambling for its very life.
The High School Football Team That Never Wins.
In a high school of only 28 students, every year is the same.
Richard has the field, but they don’t come.
Those boys eligible to play football promise they’ll be out. But then their parents suddenly worried about grades or injuries. The holdouts dodge Richard at school, ducking into empty classrooms when they see him coming, just so they won’t have to tell him to his face that they don’t want to play that season.
This summer, the head coach recruited a girl from the Rez, whose presence would give him nine kids — enough players to substitute for boys who tire after playing the entire game — on offense and defense — as required in short-staffed 8-man football teams.
But the girl backed out at the last moment, despite her mother’s assurances she would play, failing to show up for the first practice, apparently deciding to play girls volleyball, not higher-risk boys football.
The other day, Richard got word that one of this season’s holdout, a skinny kid named Jerry who played last year, was spotted inside a pickup truck at practice, watching the other boys take taps, taking pictures he then Snap-chatted to a friend.
“I can’t understand why kids disappear. You see ‘em here. Why not practice?” he says.
Soon, when they start full tackle drills, more boys might have second thoughts. “Once you show ’em the pads,” he says, “they vanish.”
It looks like the boys suddenly just draw the line.
And who can blame them?
Maybe it’s not just laziness or disinterest. Maybe some kids are just tied of losing, weary of having their noses rubbed into the muddy turf at both home games and away.
The Bulldogs are the only team in the league without cheerleaders. They schedule only schedules four games a season — instead of other teams with nine — so they won’t poke gaping holes in the league schedule if they can’t muster enough players and have to forfeit the entire season, which Richard has been forced to do in the past.
Just look into the eyes of those return players who have shown up.
They know what’s coming.
A demanding schedule against bigger, better, more-financed teams that in past years have run over them like a freight train.
“Where’s Jaxson?” asks a sturdy Rez kid named Tristan.
It’s an hour into practice and, so far, nobody has seen the quiet, lanky freshman.
This is unusual. James is always the early one, while the rest of the boys are barely on time, and mostly late.
Jack tells Richard they should stress to the players to call their coaches of they can’t make practice. Still, both men know their disciplinary powers are limited: If a kid quits the team, the whole season might go with him.
Just then, somebody spots two figures approaching the field.
“Here comes Jaxson,” Richard says flatly.
The boy edges toward the field with his head down, walking next to his aunt who, along with his younger sister, Holly, has watched every practice from the bleachers.
The slow approach better resembles a strict teacher marching a student down the hallway toward the principal’s office then a boy showing up late for practice.
Everybody know who’s in charge here.
Richard sighs and walks out to greet them.
“He’s restricted,” the aunt says without greeting.
She hands Richard several sheets of paperwork that describes injuries to Jaxson's left hip and ankle. His father was driving him to Winnemucca on Friday for X-rays and an MRI scan, she said.
“The doctor says no running or hitting, but he can do stretches,” the aunt says.
Jaxson keeps his head on his chest, as though afraid to look up.
Did the injuries happen at practice?
“I did it a few weeks ago,” Jaxson says meekly, pointing toward his hip, “but I thought I could play through it.”
“His ankle is giving him trouble, too,” the aunt interjects.
“We can tape that up,” Richard offers.
Then Richard tries some public relations with the concerned relative.
“I was wondering where Jaxson was,” he smiles. “He’s never late.”
He turns to the boy.
“Well, we’re glad you’re here. You can shag footballs.”
Jaxson catches a few balls before wandering over to play catch with this aunt and younger sister.
Richard looks over and shakes his head.
The boy doesn’t look hurt, but who knows?
So, this is what it has come to, the daily water-drip challenges of coaching an 8-man football team in a dying western town that can no longer provide the bodies.
An hour later, Richard sits at a picnic table outside the boys’ locker room.
Jaxson appears, his head still hung low.
Richard needs this boy, and appeals to his sense of team spirit.
“I hope everything checks out good tomorrow on those medical tests.”
He pauses, lets his words settle.
The boy is still quiet.
“I need ya for this year.”
The comment is almost a plea.
The boy nods his head and walks off. His 13-year-old sister is waiting for him for the short walk tho the family house in town.
Richard gets up and slowly heads off toward his red pickup truck, ready to head home.
Even for the Football Team That Never Wins, the season is off to an inauspicious start.