Streaks

I drove to Graniteville, South Carolina last Friday and stood at the 20-yard line. My eyes became lost in the sea of orange that was crashing into the night sky. I was there to see the unexpected — the miracle that might be Midland Valley High School’s first football win over rival North Augusta High School in a quarter-century.

Twenty. I’d seen a lot of streaks in my 20 years covering high school football. The first star was Brian Leonardi, who wore the green and gold garb of my alma mater. He ran right down the middle of Petticoat Junction, cutting a path right through Silver Bluff’s heart en route to a defensive touchdown.

I was younger then and devoid of the understanding that journalists don’t cheer in the press box. “Run,” I yelped at the top of my Aiken lungs. The fans a few feet underneath cut their blue eyes at me.

The next streak was Dekoda Watson. I don’t remember whether it was at Aiken’s or South Aiken’s stadium — all I remember is that Watson scooped up a fumble and ran in the face of history. I still can’t believe he didn’t score, but history can be like the wind sometimes.

I blinked again and Watson had retired from the NFL. Only yesterday, he blocked a punt against UCLA in the Emerald Bowl and showed he was a hidden gem. Watson’s streak was less about games played or plays made, though. It was about a streak of push-ups and prayers that he lifted as a kid, a road paved with literal faith and works.

Streaks are fleeting. One minute, the expectation of beating your crosstown rival is a birthright; the next minute, the winds of history are eroding your hapless and foolish traditions.

Not only are streaks just a flash in a pan, they don’t tell the whole story. How could they? A streak only cares about winning and losing, which is ironic because we define a hint of someone’s character as, you guessed it, a streak.

That 20-yard-line was my temporal loom. I saw the faces of the future fly past me, into the stands and down the sidelines. There was Midland Valley’s Traevon Dunbar, on a 2,000-yard dash from Silver Bluff to Midland Valley to a D-1 program if these college coaches have any good sense. There was North Augusta’s Corey Tillman, whose fleet feet and charmed arm paled in comparison to his black and gold heart.

There were the faces that looked like mine. When I streaked toward recess on the first day of first grade at North Aiken Elementary School, I was intercepted by the playground bully, Travis Mays. Years later, he put on football pads and never stopped raising hell.

I saw Travis and laughed, in that gregarious way old friends do. Dap is insufficient to convey appreciation. A hug ensues. Travis is a mentor now, and Trav sounds too much like Traevon to be a coincidence. Streaks cannot convey this.

Streaks might forget the indomitable Daniel Carr, whom God not only saw fit to name after a sleek, motorized machine, but also made his spirit animal a wild horse. Carr never beat North Augusta in football, but he didn’t need to on his way to winning state titles in both football and basketball. I remember him, nearsighted, playing basketball with my kid brother. He took off the glasses and became Superman.

It’s not enough to stuff 5,000 or so people into a modest high-school stadium. You gotta fit their hopes and dreams in there as well. Blue and orange and black and gold pushing back and forth against each other for an eternity. And then, it happened. Fourth and four, The Valley up 49-42.

Surely, Midland Valley’s Mustangs would give the ball to Traevon Dunbar, one of the best running backs in the area. No, the state. No, the country. They didn’t.

Surely, North Augusta’s Yellow Jackets would concede four more yards on top of the countless yards that both defenses had given up over the course of the evening. They. Didn’t.

Tillman got the ball in his hands and became a quarter-century’s worth of inevitability. A throw here, a run there. Now you see me, now you don’t. Touchdown. 49-48, MV. Two-point conversion because why not? We are.

Full stop. No good!

“No good?” inevitability said. No, WE good. Jackets recover the onside kick and the darkness starts to overtake The Valley. Again.

I find myself on Midland Valley’s sideline as all of this is happening, next to two young men who work at a nearby ice cream parlor. This wouldn’t mean much, except they are draped in inverted orange sherbet jerseys, with a hint of blueberry. For weeks, I would go get Sunday dessert for my wife and kids, and they would tell me about their undefeated team. Funny thing is, I never saw them as football players, just kids working a summer job into the autumn. Streaks can’t convey this.

With five seconds left, inevitability lined up for a field goal down the middle of the Valley. It took a few steps back, then to the left. The snap, the hold.

Inevitability was blocked.

Those melting Dreamsicles were wrapped up in delirium. Orange floats. The announcer lost his mind, as if this wasn’t supposed to happen. It was.

A broken streak only tells half the tale. The other side of it is that a new streak begins. That still feels deficient because I know what it’s like to fight for a yard, to try to find the words after seeing something indescribable, and better yet, feeling something that you can’t explain.

That scoreboard ain’t nothing but a bunch of lights, talking about winning and losing. But the speed of light ain’t as fast as the universe is vast. I didn’t come to appreciate that from winning and losing. I came to appreciate that from learning. And that streak is a Mobius strip.