Football Friday Is Just Around the Corner

Always at this time of the summer, even after all these many years, I still get that feeling. It's a little sense of dread of the task ahead, but it’s overwhelmed by excitement. I think it's a lot like what the players and coaches also feel. We're less than a month away from starting our 27th season of High School Football Friday.

A lot has come and gone at WRAL-TV since 1981, but Football Friday in the fall has remained a staple.

In 1981, after working for 10 years on the weekends, the early mornings or whenever else the station had asked, I had finally become the sports anchor on the 6 and 11 o'clock weekday newscasts. Jay Jennings, whose son Jason is now a member of our sports staff (and does that make me feel old or what?), was our photographer, and Bob Holliday had just us joined us as our Sports Director. We all had fond memories of playing athletics in high school and we all somehow wanted to make Friday nights in the fall special.

I will tell you that in the beginning, our efforts were earnest but modest. We covered a few games with video, mostly in Wake County, and put a lot of scores on the scoreboard. It was better than what we had been doing, but it was hard to do more with our staff limitations. We wanted to, though.

It was really not until the fall of 1983 that things began to happen.

Keith Baker, who today is one of our very best news photographers, had just graduated from Athens Drive High School in Raleigh and had taken a part-time job on our studio camera crew. Keith was a television fanatic, very enthusiastic and wanted to learn more.

One day that summer, he had come to me with an idea. His goal was to become a news photographer, and he believed that a good way to get experience would be shooting high school football games. He asked for my help. If I could get him access to a news camera, he would go out and shoot a couple of games on Friday night. I thought this was a great idea. We knew his video might not be usable at first but it would be a great learning tool for him, and whatever he brought back would be a bonus for us.

So in the fall of 1983, young Keith Baker set out to shoot high school football with one of our expensive news cameras, shaking like a leaf hoping he wouldn't break the thing. I will tell you he was a natural. Each week, his video got better. And because of him, our game count began to go up.

Meanwhile, others saw what Keith was doing and asked if they could do the same thing. We (especially Bob) had some give and take with the powers that be in the news department, but eventually we had a little group of would-be photographers heading out on Friday nights. I called them the Goat Crew (don't ask why, it's a long story), but Football Friday was beginning to build. We were also able to get the use of Sky 5, and started the Sky 5 doubleheader games of the week. Things were happening.

In 1984, I got a letter from the High School Athletic Association praising us for our coverage for one October Friday night. I think we covered only eight games with a camera that night, but that was something back then. We were all very proud, and I still have that letter.

Gradually, we got some of our news photographers involved. Most important, we were able to get extra time within our newscast from our 11 o'clock producer, and now we were beginning to really up our game coverage, getting into as many counties in the viewing area as we could. With a six- to seven-minute slot in our late news, we were now jamming in 17 to 18 high school football games. It was a challenge, but it was fun, and what we were doing was getting some recognition. People were watching.

It was in 1989 that I went to our station manager, Paul Quinn, and suggested that we should do a Friday night high school wrap-up show at 11:30 following our late newscast. I will always be grateful to Paul; he was behind the idea 100 percent. He wanted it to happen.

I'll never forget the excitement we all had for that first show. That entire day had a game-like quality to it. Those who worked on the show had Football Friday T-shirts. We had news photographers out shooting games as well as our entire sports staff and part-timers; whoever could pick up a camera went out to shoot for Football Friday. And what was so great then is the same today: everybody working on the program, from reporting to photography to behind-the-scenes, was having fun. It was just like we were playing a game ourselves. We had our Football Friday team.

We covered 28 games that first night, and that's pretty much what we try to do now. It was supposed to be a 15-minute show, but ended up going longer. I was scared to death I was going to get chewed out, but nobody upstairs said anything, so each week for the rest of that season we kept going until we had run out of highlights and scores. The next year, it was turned into a 30-minute show, which it still is today.

Our planning is, of course, already under way for this year’s show, and we will have more on that closer to our first installment on Aug. 24, the official start of the season.

High school sports have always been very important to me. I have so much admiration for those who coach at this level. High school coaches put in so much time and so much effort, and the influence that they have on those they coach can last forever.

And I hope the young athletes who begin practice this week realize how very lucky they are. To have the ability to be a part of a team is something very special. Win or lose, the chance is there to build memories that will last a lifetime and to find friends who will be there just as long.

Much can be learned in athletics, lessons that will carry over into whatever is done in life. There's nothing like playing your heart out each time out and having fun doing it.

And then there's the oh-so-important lessons of how to win humbly and with sportsmanship. And in my mind even more important, how to handle the disappointment of a loss with grace and dignity. That's the true indication of what one is made of, to be able to handle that hurt with class. So much about what's in store in the future can be learned on high school playing fields.