|
|
| LONGVIEW - Members of the Longview High School football team got a out and enthusiastic send off Friday as students, faculty, LHS alumni and Longview residents gathered at the high school and along the bus route.
Signs from other Longview Independent School District schools and departments lined the walls of LHS' Coliseum Friday morning as the students and faculty participated in the last pep rally of the football season. Like at any pep rally, the band played, the drill team and majorettes performed and the football team captains spoke to the road. But unlike other pep rallies this year, the TV cameras were rolling, city officials were present and Longview High alumni made a special appearance. Parent snap residents were also on hand to watch the festivities. Surviving members of the 1937 Lobo football team and their classmates were given a standing ovation by the crowd as they entered the Coliseum. "This is stupendous, super," said Tillman Perkins, who was a sophomore at Longview High in 1937. "We won state, but we never had anything like this. These are memories." Perkins, dressed in a Lobo sweatshirt and green cowboy hat, said he tried out for the 1937 team but took Coach P.E. Shotwell's advice to give it up because he was so small. Gay and Ken Kirland, who said they had no been to a pep rally this year, were standing on the upper breezeway that circles the Coliseum. Gay Kirkland, LHS Class of 1964, was on tie topes, trying to see over the heads of the crowd in front of her. "We're so proud," she said. "It's so hard to keep things in perspective at this level, but these guys are doing just great." School bus driver E.L. Ross who described the team as his boys, said he was glad to be at the pep rally. "I drove most of these kids since they were in elementary school," he said. Junior bass drummers Jarriett Edwards and Genoa Freeman said they had replaced about 10 bass drums heads lately because their aggressive playin has caused the heads to break. "There's cracks in everything," Edwards said, pointing out the marks of hard beating on the bass drum. "That's called showing support." Katie Johnson, whose nephews make up "The Dog Pound" informal sprite group, said she would not have missed seeing off the charter bus filled with Lobo football players. "It was very touching, sentimental, to see all the old players," she said. "This should be inspiring to the kids that whatever mark you make in life follows you so you have to stay positive." Trey Johnson, Johnson's freshmen son, said his mother was so excited Friday morning that she woke him up with a sprite shaker at about 5:45 a.m. Across town, children as Bramlete Elementary were also excited when they got to walk a couple of blocks to the Kmart parking lot to see the Lobo bus drive by. Kay Trich, a fifth-grade teacher at the school, said the school's principal informed teachers about the bus coming by Friday morning and left the decision whether to go see them off up to individual teachers. With rosy cheeks from the cold, the students in Trich's class held up green slates with encouraging words printed with white chalk. "We didn't have time to make signs," Trich explained. "So I thought, hey, we have green slates and white chalk." |