By Richard Carrier
Cointributing Writer

It’s that time of year, when we have to adjust to an entirely new auditory assault on our senses. Most of us could be blindfolded and led onto a any field or court at a high school and quickly know what is going on . Balls coming off rackets and scuffing across macadam sounds undeniable like a tennis match. The occasional solid “thunk” and, if you listen carefully, cleats punching through solid turf, gives away a soccer match. A fat orange softball burying into a catcher’s mitt or leaving an aluminum bat won’t ever be mistaken for a baseball doing the same thing.

It might take a little while, but most of us would be able to eventually sort out even a track meet.

But this time of year, there is absolutely no doubt about the origin of the sharp sounds resounding from the fields at Powhatan High and Blessed Sacrament. It’s football, and the pure-effort sounds this sport generates won’t ever be confused with any other activity. And there is another unique occurrence attached to football: the generation of spirit and commitment.

Perhaps I should qualify that: It is not that this activity is so unique, in and of itself, it’s more that it’s unique in it’s intensity. There is just nothing that even gets in the same building as the spirit and fan intensity of a high school or college football game.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve sat on the hill or in the parking lot above our two high school’s practice fields and watched the coaching staffs work to mold two large but anonymous groups of kids into cohesive units. It’s all kind of boring until a scrimmage, when those sounds start firing through the hot, humid air. Then you know it’s only a matter of time, a short time. Then the team-photo sessions pull it all together. With the cheerleaders and the team both in full, fresh uniforms (check out the Indians monster, #56- a freshman?) and the players striking their most intimidating poses, time is condensed to just a couple of days.

And then its here: Time to cover the first football game of 2010.

I’ll do that in the hypocritical love-hate attitude I’ve developed for the game over a half-century. I hate the game for the injuries and future physical deterioration it often causes, and love it for the total physical and mental commitment most of its players (and all of its great ones) give. And I love it for the way it pulls a community together. There truly is nothing that compares to the camaraderie, loyalty, support and common purpose of those who come together under the lights on a Friday night.

I’ll cover Blessed Sacrament and I’ve been looking for an excuse to get to the field a couple of hours before the 7 o’clock kick-off .

Maybe I should get there when the Knights take the field for first warm-ups. I’ll just wander around and infiltrate the drills- checking out attitudes and taking temperatures.

Do the defending state champion Knights look just a bit too overconfident? Is Deon Watts trying to disguise a limp? Does the new quarterback (and who is it going to be?) have that dangerous “deer in the headlights look”? How’s that new nose tackle coming off the ball? Does he look focused and crisp, or somewhat lost?

I’ll find a way to do all these things while deluding myself that my conclusions are both informed and important. I’m really doing no more than fulfilling my desire to get as close to the game, through the players and coaches, as I can manage. I’ll drag my on-field analysis out as long as possible, collecting a candid comment or two, and then head for the press box. I’ll try to be professional and detached as I compile a play-by-play overlay of the game, but I’ll lose my neutrality the first time the Knights score.

It will be late when I get home and, as always, I’ll kiss my wife awake. And, as always, she’ll sleepily ask, “Did you have fun?” She knows far too much.