HASKELL — It was midnight, but was it madness? Well, let me tell you about it. Texas high school football players can't begin full-contact practice until they've had five days of conditioning to get them acclimated to the heat of early August, per UIL rules. In other words, that first tackle won't come until the morning of the sixth day. But what is morning? For most of us, that's sometime after 7 a.m. For my kids this summer, it's been more like 11 a.m. But for some football teams, morning is midnight. Coincidentally, a favorite photo from a practice like that had appeared in my social media earlier that week. It made me wonder if I'd get the chance to capture something like that again. I was already in Haskell for another assignment Friday, Aug. 7, and my ears perked up when Mayor Christina Isbell encouraged the crowd to come out for Midnight Madness at the Haskell High School track, which doubles as the team's practice field, later in the evening. Opportunity was knocking. It wouldn't hurt to open the door.
So at 11:15 p.m., my evening's work completed, I drove to the field. Things were still yet to get moving. Fanticipation Parents and children drifted in and out of the light from a snow cone trailer. In the bleachers, a few people sat in the glow coming from the small press box while on the field, a pair of cheerleaders made TikTok videos.
But at the stroke of midnight when the field lights were supposed to come on, nothing happened. They flickered off and on a few times and then went dead. At first they tried the old West Texas tradition of lining the cars up along the fence, noses pointed inward to light the field with headlights. But that meant the kids likely wouldn't be able to pass the ball. So like a great midnight migration, we all queued up and followed each other's tail lights for a mile to the baseball field across town. When I arrived, it looked like a "Mad Max" movie. The folks were in the dry grass parking lot driving six ways to Sunday in every direction except a safe one, dirt and dust glowing from headlights and rising into the air. The ball field lights were also out, and no one was parking. Midnight rodeo I stopped my car to wait out the mayhem. They were fixin’ to have themselves an impromptu demolition derby, and my car already has its fill of dents.
Someone came up with a plan, however, and the lot drained of cars all heading back to the track. Naturally I followed because by them, I was committed. It was a quarter to 1 a.m., and I’m getting something out of this no matter what, fender-dings aside. The milling about continued at the track where nothing had changed, but I decided to park anyway because gas ain't cheap. And of course just as I do so, an enterprising individual takes point and leads the pack back to the ball field. At this point I’m thinking, “This really is midnight madness.” Hey, you've got your football in my baseball field Back at the diamond, it was all lit up, and after I parked saw folks trying to navigate waist-high summer weeds poking through the bleachers behind the backstop. Down the third base line, pickups backed in and put their tailgates down, cranking up the heavy metal while drivers reclined in lawn chairs with a personal refreshment at hand.
Initially, the spectators hung out in the clay between first and third base to watch. Then as the team began to define the area where they would perform their drills, the crowd ventured into outfield on either side of the football boys. They unfolded their lawn chairs, sat in the grass or just stood. In centerfield, the team split into two groups and began tackling each other, cheered on, as the Aussies might say, by their mates. Then they moved on to passing drills, running patterns and using players with brightly colored shower caps stretched over helmets as reference points. One tackle ended up rolling a little too close to spectators in left field. After the tumble, those folks picked themselves up and moved their chairs back about 20 feet. Then a coach directed the players to move everyone back closer toward second base.
I’d made a few pictures with quarterbacks and linebackers maneuvering with the backstop in the distance behind them, but now I ambled over to that left field side. More: Texas DPS issues back-to-school warnings for motorists, students More: Meta, OpenAI join list of tech giants following Texas data center rules “Did you get a picture of us almost getting tackled,” one lady said. “No,” I said. “But I have come over to see if it’ll happen again.” They laughed, and I tried out this new angle for a while until the late hour began to wear me down. As fun as this juxtaposition of baseball and football was — like peanut butter and chocolate colliding together in one great taste — It didn’t look like anyone was going to hit a home run, and there were no uprights for a touchdown dance. At an hour away, Abilene wasn’t getting any closer, so I bid Haskell goodbye — ding-free and at least I got something. This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Midnight Madness lives up to name at Haskell's first football practice