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Friday night lights are a welcome sight

4 min read

For many sportswriters around the area, a surefire way to find an unfamiliar high school football stadium is to scan the horizon through your windshield once you have arrived in the vicinity of the game you are about to cover and find the Friday night lights shining in the distance.

It has been about a decade now since my days employed covering high school athletics left me searching for a high school football stadium, but I am looking forward to getting back to that practice this fall on an amateur basis.

My son, Jack, will turn three in October. Admittedly, he is still a little young to avoid his bedtime completely and make it through a whole game, but his love of football is already beginning to burgeon.

I took him to a Steelers preseason practice at Heinz Field, and he insisted upon clutching his Fisher-Price football the entire time, showing it proudly to many of the people we came across.

So much to the likely chagrin of his “mum mum,” he and I are going to venture out and watch the first half of some of the region’s high school games this fall.

The way I am justifying this to my wife is that if we only stay for the first half, we can make it home just a little bit past his bedtime and avoid a cranky toddler every Saturday morning.

These plans will no doubt be so much more beneficial to me than my 36-pound, soon-to-be pigskin-crazed Southwestern Pennsylvania-born progeny.

There is something comforting about high school football returning with a full house of fans this fall. It is a rite of passage for many across the United States, but as has been written about plenty of times before, high school football games take on particular importance in this neck of the woods.

I didn’t play football at Bethel Park High School. I came to love football Fridays later in life as a staff writer at the McKeesport Daily News.

I learned covering athletics of all types across Western Pennsylvania that these high school events really matter. Young boys and girls come of age and learn valuable life lessons on gridirons, soccer fields, gyms and baseball and softball diamonds. Families come together to celebrate their loved ones present and lost, cherishing the memories being made and that have gone by the wayside.

The sights, sounds and smells of these games made a lasting impression that I don’t think I’ll ever quite shake.

For communities where high school football matters, the coming fall Friday nights are going to feel like a rebirth after the events surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.

I am so ready to safely – I am fully vaccinated and will wear a mask along with Jack – take part in the full-fledged return of high school football in our area.

I hope you find a way of your own to feel like a return to normal has come to you and your family.

This edition of South Hills Living highlights plenty of options to that end.

Eleanor Bailey writes beautifully of South Hills special needs athletes who recently gave a triathlon a try. The dedication of the athletes and their families to take on this challenge perfectly exemplifies the grit and determination many of our neighbors have exhibited in getting through the pandemic.

Bailey also contributed a photo essay to this edition, which shows off some of the South Hills’ natural splendors. What better way to feel a sense of normalcy than to get back to nature?

Harry Funk also contributed two stories to this issue – one about a local musician and the other about a new card game that is sweeping the local area. His stories reveal how people are still looking to connect and come together as we slowly but surely regain the camaraderie lost during the pandemic.

Thank you for reading.

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