Today I have pulled an image from my way back file from my newspaper days, a photo I shot at a high school football playoff game. See photo and more text below.

I shot this while working for a local newspaper in Virginia much earlier in my career. It was taken during the closing seconds of a Virginia High School League playoff game a day or two after after Thanksgiving. (please see more text below)

One of the things I miss the most about not working in newspapers, believe it or not, is covering high school football. The intensity and level of emotion you can see in a prep game is hard to match in the pros and even in college sports. I have been “binging on Netflix” lately watching the entire series of “Friday Night Lights,” a fantastic show  about life and high school football. FNL captures the intensity of the high school gridiron like no other show or movie has. If you have never seen “Friday Night Lights,” I would highly recommend it.

The match-up this photo was taken during  featured my alma-mata Fairfax High, in what was its first playoff game in many years.  While I was a student at the school, the team rarely did that well.  A year or so after I left a new football coach was brought in and with that a new era of winning football.

I saw this scene of a Fairfax player appearing to kneel in prayer as his team had one last shot at winning the game. It had rained all day. The weather was miserable and everyone was covered with mud. I could not ask for better conditions to make a memorable image.

I do not even remember the action shot I took of the final play of the game once I took my focus off of this player. This picture seemed to say more than any action on the field.

Fairfax lost that day, but the team gave it everything it had. The players “left it out on the field” as the old saying goes.  It was a game I certainly will never forget.

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