
Click the image to
check out the band.
by Terry Foster / The Detroit News
MUSKEGON -
Muskegon coach Tony Annese rushed from the
field, past excited fans, to reach his favorite postgame spot
under the stands at Hackley Stadium.
He planted himself by his team's dressing
room to enjoy one final tradition in an evening filled with
rituals that bridged generations. Friday, about 6,000 fans
gathered to celebrate 100 years of football at Hackley as the
Big Red trounced Zeeland East, 45-13.
Few went home despite the lopsided score.
Like Annese, they wanted to feel the booming
drums vibrate off the concrete walls as the band marched
underneath the stadium.
"OK. You got to hang tight against the wall,"
Annese said, walking toward his spot and pressing his back to
the wall. "You will get hit if you are not careful."
Fans lined both sides of the cramped corridor
as the band paraded through the narrow human tunnel.
"Look how focused they are," Annese said with
admiration.
The march that eventually took the musicians
to their music room has been going on for decades.
So has winning football.
purity
in America.
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It was a brisk clear night, windless, under a Halloween
Eve's quartermoon.
As the teams went through their pregame drills there was loud,
rhythmic clapping among the
Philadelphia
visitors in the bleachers.
The Ackerman band broke into a march tune.
"The brass section is flat tonight,"
Professor Sansing said; then, absorbing the Friday-night
high school pageantry which had become habit to me, he added:
"This may be the last athletic purity in
America."
THE COURTING OF MARCUS DUPREE
by Willie Morris
Standing on the lawn,
I hear the sound of distant drums.
They carry a message - football season is near.
It is my
favorite time of the year.
The heat of the summer is slowly replaced by the beauty
of autumn.
Winter
begins it's slow descend.
Soon the
team will take the field to fight for the athletic honor of
Muskegon
High School at historic
Hackley Stadium.
Cheerleaders will sway and shout.
The ghosts of players from well over one hundred seasons
of competition will fill the air.
Then, when the game is over, the band will march through the tunnel
beneath the old concrete stands.
Fans will line
the walls. Drums echo within, as the brilliance of color,
rhythm, and formality fill the atmosphere. A crush of people
emerge, as the performers cut left, then right, marching up Sanford Street toward their final
destination near the old gymnasium.
The perfect ending for a cool autumn evening.
Professor
Sansing was right.
This is the last athletic purity in America.
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