Last night was the ninth grade football team's last home game of the 2004 season. It was the family's first viewing of what we call Heather's scoreboard, a matrix board / scoreboard that she led the way in raising funding for from local businesses. The scoreboard is amazing and kept my daughter captivated for most of the night. Or at least when she wasn't eating nachos, peanuts, popcorn, jolly rancher lollipops, hotdogs, or part of my nephew's pixie stick. All I can say about THAT meal is blech.

The game was close for a while, but the fact that Chattahoochee High had only 32 players had to come into play late in the first half and most of the second half.

After scoring late in the 2nd quarter, Chattahooche was set to kick off to the return team, on which my nephew plays the front and center position. The visitors dropped an onside kick that hit my nephew and rolled away a bit before he pounced on it, giving his team possession on the visitor's side of the field.

After the initial reaction of "oh my God...what happened?", we all realized that our boy had done well. Very well in fact. High fives were exchanged all around as the teams went to halftime with North leading 21-7.

When the second half started, we all mentioned that there was no way they'd try an onside kick again, and then they did. This time, young Nick made a great play, fielding the ball on one hop cleanly and dropping to the ground with it. First down Bulldogs again.

Eventually, the score got to 28-14 us, and the second string offense took the field. They proceeded to march down the field and score their second touchdown in two weeks, led by backup center (my nephew) and the left guard (his friend and our neighbor kid).

Then, the second string defense took the field featuring young Daubie, a kid small enough that I'd be scared to send in if I was the coach. But Daubie's a fighter and sure enough, he had 1.5 tackles and was his own teammate away from recovering a fumble late in the going.

North won 35-14 and it was a very proud day for all of us. My sister in law actually started misting up after the second fumble recovery by her boy, (long known as a bit of a screw-up) and then there were jokes of allergies and other reasons for misty eyes for the rest of the night.