JimBlackBooks.com
1980 - 1989
During the 1981-82 school year it was tradition to decorate the football boys’ lockers with signs and fill them with snacks and candy on game day. All the girls would draw names for their assigned “guy” and the only rule was that you couldn’t decorate your boyfriend’s locker. This particular rule was in place in the event of a break-up mid-season. Every Friday during football season the girls would arrive early for school and sneak to their football player’s locker and hang hand-made clever signs decorated with candy and snacks to take on the road trip or stash for pre-game later that day. It was a big deal. I remember spending my entire allowance on the best snacks and candy and worked steadily to make the cutest, cleverest, and memorable signs for my guy. I felt he was one of the lucky ones and didn’t want to be out-done by any of the other girls. The season passed and along came basketball season. It wasn’t quite as big a deal as football season but that year the girls’ team made the playoffs. Much to our surprise on game day of the big play-off game with Boyd we arrived at school to find our lockers all decorated by the football guys. It was awful. They bought the cheapest 10 for a dollar generic snacks that no one would feed to anyone they loved, but it was the best day of my life up to that point. I can’t even tell you how messy the signs were – they looked like the first graders made them and some of the words were misspelled and didn’t make sense. They gave it their best shot and failed miserably. And they didn’t stop there. All the football guys sat together at the game and actually cheered for us just as we had for them at every game. We lost that play-off game but every girl on the team felt so proud and honored that day.
Sandra (Dugan) House – Class of 1984
