SACCO: It’s an experience

By Jim Sacco

Published: September 19, 2008

GREENVILLE
They line up in pairs and walk down the hill that leads to the softball field. Little grammar-school cheerleaders that you could carry in a teacup if you so desired.
There’s nothing quiet about them, marching in cadence toward the football field, their high-pitched voices screeching out cheers that stick in your head and you hum the whole drive home.
I’m fired up. It’s game time.
Then the other side.
You fired up?
And back.
I’m fired up.
And together.
It’s game time.
Welcome to Greenville, or so says Riverheads principal Steve Barnett, who glad-hands seemingly everybody with a red Riverheads hat on or showing off some other type of Gladiator gear.
Welcome to The Show, or what some may call it, where Jerry Jarvis — a longtime Riverheads booster who knows everybody and vice-versa — shows off the “two cords of wood,” that are up for raffle. (Proving that even a slack-jawed sports columnist learns something new every day.)
It’s a place where the electricity of high school football hangs in the air like slabs of beef in a meat locker. A place where the Gladiators players (“The kids know it’s an honor to wear the red,” is a familiar refrain from head coach Robert Casto.) are greeted by thunderous applause and red and white fireworks when they take the field.
It’s a place where 76-year-old John Pilson proudly shows off the Middlebrook Volunteer Fire Department uniform he’s worn for 54 years. And, on the other side of the field, a woman in a red sweater holds a newborn baby still in a swaddling cloth.
A place where the little league football players, dreaming of taking the field in the red (and, better yet, the elusive black uniforms) form a human tunnel for the varsity football players to run through.
A place where running the ball up the gut seemingly every down isn’t frowned upon. It’s expected out here, and welcomed. In Greenville it gains yards and equals wins. It’s brought two state championships. It’s brought pride.
They come for the tradition. They stay for the experience.
They cheer the kickoff and give the bands rousing applause.
The Middlebrook Volunteer Fire Department truck blares its siren after a two-point conversion makes it 14-0 against Parry McCluer.
The sirens? That’s just a bonus down here in Greenville. Where sports, and the kids that play them, are king.