Hill-Topics
Lest you think it's your mincemeat pie that's making your coach or player seem less than spectacularly thankful this holiday weekend, rest assured
It's not the pie.
It's the game.
The Class 3A State Football Championship will be played, as scheduled, on Saturday in Salina, but without the players and coaching staff of the Hillsboro Trojans' football team.
In case you were in Guam and had to miss it, Hillsboro made a valiant effort this past Friday, but lost in the semifinals to Garden Plain, 31-26.
And just like that, it was time to unsnap the chinstrap and take off the helmet. For seniors not going on to play college football, it was the end of a career.
No matter how good the turkey tastes on Thursday, sticking in the craw of these Trojans will be the painful knowledge that in Garden Plain and Silver Lake, Thanksgiving dinner will be a pre-game meal.
That's hard to swallow.
No Alka-Seltzer or other bromide, verbal or liquid, can ease the pain, which feels like they've been placekicked, right in the heart.
Whatever you do this weekend, if you're at the table with a Hillsboro football player or coach, parent, or fan, do not make the mistake of saying, "Gee whiz! It's only a game! Or, you should be thankful, you had a great season!"
Sometime after Saturday, the Trojans will agree that it was a great season, and I look forward to the celebration!
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Speaking of turkeys, did you ever stop to think how truly amazing it is that Thanksgiving always seems to fall on a Thursday, year after year?
I did!
In fact, I made that comment, in earnest, a few years ago. It was in public, before a large audience, and I was wearing a preacher's robe at the time.
When everybody laughed, I laughed, too, pretending it was a big joke. I still don't know how for 40-plus years I missed knowing that Thanksgiving wasn't a floating holiday.
I do have a good excuse for not knowing; I was absent when they taught it to everyone else in my first-grade class.
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With this issue, the Star-Journal welcomes a new correspondent to our team. LaVonne Carrington, director of Main Street Ministries, will be bringing us the Main Street Minute. Welcome!
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Everybody but me knew that wasn't Alex Anna Ratzlaff on the front page of last week's Star-Journal. It was, rather, Noel Rubel at the Hillsboro Elementary Red Ribbon assembly, reciting her anti-drug poem "100 percent Nasty Stuff."
I am 100 percent sorry.
— GRANT OVERSTAKE
