If you haven’t ever tried playing football, you probably wouldn’t understand.

These guys this season for the Thompson Falls Blue Hawks are experiencing something most people never will.

Most of them will have lived what most people won’t, the extent of the highs and lows of life to those willing to open their eyes and see it.

In that context, the 59-13 loss the Blue Hawks absorbed this past weekend as they climb into the world of 11-player football can be an amazing gift.

Or it can be a bad memory.

It’s each individual player’s choice how they perceive it.

Do I come out here each day, knowing we have some catching up to do, or do I stay safely ensconced in the basement, video game controller in hand.

Consistently falling behind early in game after game, despite the obvious weekly signs of improvement can do that.

Do the pads go on each night after school because it’s “cool”? When you think about it, behind cool isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Do I actually love the game of football, love the comradeship with my “homies”, love the sights, sounds and smells of football?

And if you do love football, there’s something about the effort and stick-to-itness being displayed by high school boys who have taken up the challenge of the switch from 8-player to 11-player football that can be inspiring to say the least.

They are cutting a new trail for those behind them.

So as they jogged onto the field at Lincoln County High School in Eureka this past Friday night, full of pep and vigor, it may be because they are onto something the average football fan, or human for that matter, will ever fully comprehend.

This group of guys, or at least a large percentage of them, was unbeaten and untied at this time last year. They were on their way to living the dream, maintaining a perfect record while capturing the big prize, a “state championship”.

So when they fell behind Eureka 6-0 in the opening minutes of the first quarter, there had to be something harkening them back to 2021. When the deficit quickly ballooned to 20-0 before the Hawks put up a touchdown of their own on a smoothly thrown Eli Ratliff pass to make the score 20-7, there had to be something telling them they were experiencing both sides of the coin.

It isn’t always going to be the losing side of things. They know the value of hard work, great coaching and classmates who feel what they feel, that from hard work comes good things.

It would be wrong to say they have excepted the situation and moved on, which to some extent some have done.

But those same guys know that things can and will turn around. The wins will start flowing again. Joy will return to the field in Thompson Falls.

Hokey way to look at things? Maybe.

But the highs and lows have been happening for years.

These guys have just seen the extent of those highs and the depth of those lows and still they don the pads.

Friday night they will run onto their home field and smack Loyola in the chops. They will keep fighting and trying and the wins will come.

Of course, in so many ways, they already have won.