Beat Wellesley

 It's 10 am on Thanksgiving and it's pouring outside in Massachusetts. I would kill to be standing outside on the sidelines of a high school football game. It's where I'm supposed to be. Where we are supposed to be. Rain, snow, sun, freezing cold, doesn't matter - all the games on Thanksgiving morning are great. Morning after the night before. See friends you haven't seen in months, years, lifetimes. Old girlfriends and boyfriends. New ones. Mothers from another brother. Few flasks here and there.

I'm not sure exactly how many years in a row the streak is that 2020 is now breaking, because I never thought I would have to keep track. It's at least 40 years. Maybe more. Started with Bishop Guertin vs. Nashua High at (then) Holman Stadium. Classic David vs. Goliath as Nashua High had 3,000 students across just grades 10-12 and Guertin counted only 600 across 9-12. But we won my senior year in 1984. Recall so many specific details about that morning still. I started going to that game before I was even in high school, loved going back to it through college and my first few years in the real world. I started checking out Arlington vs. Arlington Catholic after we bought our first house, surely doing all the cooks a favor by getting a diaper-clad Ryan out of the house. Think I snuck in another random local game once or twice, but I'm sure there was never a morning I didn't go to one.

It wasn't the reason for moving to Needham, but getting baptized into the longest continually running public high school game in the nation has certainly been one of the highlights of living here. Started going to this one right away in 2001. Fell in love with "the hill" at Needham High and hated the lousy side we were crammed into at Wellesley. Today would have been the 133rd meeting between Needham and Wellesley. Ryan started at QB in three of those - a special memory I cherish more every year. Photo of us hugging on the muddy field at Wellesley High after the whistle blew on the last one sits prominently in our family room. It says it all. And then some. 

During Ryan's four years, I used to hang a sheet off our front porch that read "Beat Wellesley". Hasn't been up there since 2014. It's back up for 2020.