Taking it in from the Bleachers

There is a unique smell that permeates a high school campus in the springtime. The smell gets especially pungent in the afternoons on and around the athletic fields. It is as if a unique grass grows on high school athletic fields and nowhere else, yet the use of artificial turf does little to deter the emergence of that springtime high school campus aroma. It seems to hold the same on both rural campuses as well as urban campuses. And the afternoon pungency lingers well into evening for any event that draws in parents and other members of the community after hours.

The first day I picked up Philip after lacrosse practice, the smell of the campus and the athletic fields brought me back almost instantly to my own high school decades in the past in a completely different part of the country. It was nearly the same smell. I could hear the lacrosse coaches shouting commands targeted toward the young adolescent male athletic psyches. The inflections Philip’s coaches put into each word echoed the same authority and temperament of my own high school coaches.

I made it a point to attend as many lacrosse games as possible during Philip’s freshman season. To sit on the bleachers for home games, I had to ascend a steep incline that normal erosion would never permit, but earth-moving equipment had nonetheless established in order to ensure level ground for the football-soccer-lacrosse field below the equally level softball field above. For the first lacrosse game, I had to also endure not-yet-mowed thick grass and weeds that had grown up during the intense seasonal rainfall that had ended only a couple weeks before. A parent I recognized jokingly told me to check for ticks when I reached the foot of the bleachers.

I was not expecting to see Philip get much game time as a freshman. Instead I was expecting a token amount of time at the end of each game in which the score was not too close. Early in the season, my expectations were mostly true. Philip and his freshman peers did not see any field time until Hermes was ahead by double digits. But over the course of the season that slowly changed. The first freshmen to see significant game time were Walter and one other particularly large, aggressive football player. What they lacked in core skills, Walter and his freshman football comrade made up for with tenacity and raw determination. Walter was particularly and impressively aggressive. But for Philip in his fifth lacrosse season, seeing Walter regularly drop the ball was a source of some frustration.

Philip’s day came later in the season. The older, more experienced players began to notice Philip’s competence and consistency perhaps two or three weeks before the coaches did. Philip knew the plays, could keep the ball in his net even when double-teamed and had an eye for when to pass for a teammate to score. By the final games of the regular season and all the way to the championship game, Philip was part of the regular varsity line-up rotating into the midfield, normally as center.

It was a slow change I witnessed while drinking in the familiar smells of a springtime high school campus. As Philip’s freshman season unfolded, I remembered knowing players who were like Philip. As freshman they slowly gained the respect of their coaches and teammates. Philip could not claim to be a star, but he was emerging. His position on next year’s varsity line-up was no longer in question.

To me taking it all in from the bleachers, it was the emergence that was so captivating. And when combined with the smell of the campus and my own high school memories it all evoked, I became keenly aware of the ticking clock. Philip has been under our roof for over fifteen years. But in the spring of his eighteenth year, Philip will graduate from Hermes High School and will soon after head off to pursue his adulthood. I want to savor every moment of what remains of Philip’s time under our roof. And somehow, the smell of the Hermes High School campus is part of that savor.