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Art Every Day Month Day Seven: Anatomy of a small-town football game. The Hotchkiss Bulldogs. I’m sitting in the guest room at my daughter’s house in Paonia, a small town without a stop light. That small. Looking out the window at the western Colorado sunset. Man, the skies here go on forever.
So, what to do for something creative? We went to the Hotchkiss Bulldogs high school football game and I decided to do a photojournalism essay. Here goes.
BULLDOG COUNTRY
Western Slope of Colorado has towns scattered over long distances. Today the Bulldogs played Dolores, and the team and boosters rode for 3/1/2 hours to get here. Last week, Dolores drove 5 hours for their away game.
Welcome to Hotchkiss High School, student body: 250.
This is the first playoff game and the town was out to support the Bulldogs!
The school may be small, but it had all the components of a high school football game.
There is a field. The skies may be a little more dramatic and expansive than in Bakersfield. In Bako, we like to see the air we breathe.
The field has players and cheerleaders and everything we expect.
There’s a snack bar and Wilson’s Barbeque does some great pulled pork and brisket.
The school has a band, albeit a small one. And the band has a drum line.
Of course there are cheerleaders.
And bleachers, because the fans have to sit somewhere.
There’s a press box and an announcer on the roof.
Even live radio coverage.
From more than one station, even.
There’s a lighted scoreboard, and a flag at half mast in honor of the Ft. Hood victims.
Plus, there are stadium lights so they can play night games.
All-important, there’s a team. Kids everywhere want to play football.
There’s a photographer to record all the brilliant plays of the team.
And – boosters! Including my husband, center in the hat, son-in-law Steve behind him to right, daughter Karen to left in red, granddaughter Annabelle standing on the bench, and granddaughter Cooper scrunching down on the bleacher. Jackson saw a railing that demanded to be walked.
Play begins and Hotchkiss commands the ball.
The Bulldogs are at the end zone already…and it’s a touchdown!
Actually the ball just made it to the end zone!
The touchdown did not seem to excite this drummer, who appeared to be asleep.
Fans were watching from the sidelines.
Fans were watching from the end zone.
And the kick was good.
The Dolores boosters are concerned.
They have a player down.
The hurt player is on the home side of the field and the Dolores fans can’t get a good look at what’s going on.
An ambulance has been called.
Paramedics go to work and the ambulance leaves.
Play resumes. Dolores finally has the ball.
The players perform a double pas de deux. That’s probably not what they called it.
And it’s halftime. The cheerleaders perform.
Kids were playing under the bleachers, and our kids headed to the park.
Other kids have fun on the practice field.
The game so far was 48-0 so there wasn’t much suspense. We decided to leave, and to leave this blog post, I’ll give you a view of the field. This is probably the major difference (besides the size of the band) between this particular small-town football and city football. You can see the field and the school. Wow.
[...] year I did a post – Anatomy of a Small Town Football Game – and if you go back to it and scroll down to the very last photo, you’ll see what [...]