Mike Burke
They came from the metropolitan area on Friday night looking for trouble. Actually, they came from the metropolitan area hoping for trouble. Sadly for them, they went home unhappy because there was no trouble to be found.
Moments like this make one proud to be a member of the news media. And please note the intended sarcasm.
Others from the metropolitan area came here on Friday night looking for a high school football game — a good high school football game at that. And just as they knew they would, that’s what they found. Sure, they went home Friday night with a disappointed feeling, but only because they had lost this hard-fought, down-to-the-wire football game by two lousy points.
Moments like this makes one especially proud of the players, coaches, parents and fans of the Frederick Douglass High School Eagles. And please note the intended sincerity.
The big buzz amongst the communities entering Greenway Avenue Stadium Friday night was not the football game they were about to see between the Frederick Douglass Eagles, of Upper Marlboro, and the Fort Hill Sentinels, of Cumberland, but the vehicles from the metropolitan television station that were sent here to scope the trouble that would surely take place. After all, those mountain-boy Sentinels were playing host to a team from Prince George’s County, just a beltway cruise from the nation’s capital, from where another team that visited here this fall alleges it was the victim of racial slurs hurled by the Fort Hill team.
Where there’s perceived trouble, television will be there to find it. Provided, of course, it’s good for the ratings.
In the aftermath? As the bewildered metro talking heads and their techs must have surely been feeling blue, having had to make “the trek” back down these mountains to return home without the buzz of finding the story they wanted to find, the Sentinels must certainly be feeling the good buzz over things since they came away from Friday’s game with the 14-12 victory over a quality Class 2A team that further helps their cause in the Maryland Class 1A West Region standings.
And the Sentinels should feel good about themselves, because speaking on football merits alone, they have faced a very demanding schedule and have come through it thus far with a 5-1 record that has them poised for the homestretch of the season.
Considering everything aside from football that these kids find themselves working through, they should feel more than good about themselves. They should feel damn proud of themselves. Not because they got through a football game without incident or allegation; but because they continue to live and learn, grow and develop, trust and depend on one another as they find, maybe for the first time in their young lives, that life really isn’t a bowl of cherries.
This year didn’t mark the first time Frederick Douglass came here to play a football game; or Baltimore City College, for that matter, or Dunbar, or Cambridge-South Dorchester. Nor would it have been a first for McKinley Tech, had D.C. schools allowed that team to come here two weeks ago. Yet because of the allegations made by Dunbar, the people at City College, Cambridge and Frederick Douglass have been asked incredulously, “Why on earth would you go up there to play them?”
Douglass athletic director Paul Hay told the Prince George’s Gazette last week, “We have a good relationship with Fort Hill. Paul Green, the athletic director there, was very accommodating. It was a great experience for us last year. I don’t expect anything will happen.”
Said Douglass head coach J.C. Pinkney, “Our guys are looking forward to going back there. I talked to (Fort Hill) coach (Todd) Appel about the situation. I can’t comment about Fort Hill and Dunbar, but I can say that we had a good experience going there last year. The only bad part of that trip was that we didn’t win the game. We’ll keep a cool head and not get into any verbal lash and play between the whistles. We’ll put forth our best effort.”
“They have a big stadium there and it’s kind of fun,” added Hay. “Everyone knows that everything is going to be watched to the point of nausea. Our kids enjoyed going there last year.”
Other than losing another tight game to the Sentinels, hopefully the Douglass kids — the same Douglass kids who presented a jersey and signed football to Fort Hill senior Mike O’Kelly after he was badly injured in an auto accident late last school year — enjoyed coming here this year; and hopefully, they will continue to come here and enjoy themselves.
Don’t know if this was scintillating enough to put on television, but the Frederick Douglass Eagles and their coaches showed everybody what life should be all about on Friday night. If there is an alleged problem, if there is alleged division, if there is alleged inequality, if there is alleged prejudice, you don’t run from it. You run toward it to find if it exists, and you interact to do your best so it won’t exist.
A very great man was known to say, “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” This man was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, and he was one of the most prominent figures in African-American history and United States history.
This great man, who would become known as Frederick Douglass, would be proud of the young people who united in Cumberland Friday night for something that was far greater than a great high school football game.
Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.
