Nervous!

During my Little League days, I use to play ball or be at a game six days a week. I'd play Little League on Mondays and Fridays, Church League ball during the day on Tuesdays and Thursdays and serve as the bat boy for the Ahoskie American Legion team Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights.

There was a game every day and you never had time to worry about last night because there was another game today.

Football is different. You practice all week getting ready for one game. A loss on Friday night and you had to live with it a whole week.

While I was a player in football, I played for Ahoskie High. From 1947 until 1970, we won the state championship at our level five times. The entire town lived and died with each game on Friday night.

In fact, if you go to the Chamber of Commerce in Ahoskie today, the second floor of its building is a museum of Ahoskie High School football. The Chamber used to have every game on film from 1947 until the last game played in 1987. I think you can find my picture up on the wall there somewhere.

To be a football player for Ahoskie back then meant there was a lot of pressure when you put on the Black and Gold to perform well every time out. When the school closed in 1987 to become Hertford County, Ahoskie had won 72 percent of its games in 62 years of football.

For a player like myself that hardly ever played when the score was close, my reward for being a player was to getting to wear my football jersey to school on Fridays. I was somebody.

Even though I sat on the bench, every Friday afternoon sometime before arriving at the stadium or before getting on the bus to go on a road game, I had to give up my groceries.

This never happened to me playing baseball, but that was the case before every football game.

When I first started in radio, during football games the groceries business continued. But I finally learned after a few years to just be nervous. Today, I have a mystery cough that appears Friday afternoons and stays with me until after I have spoken my first words.

When we begin the broadcast Friday night - bringing you the Gryphons and East Forsyth, we will be using a completely new system to bring you the games. Everything will be controlled by us at the stadium using a PC.

Now let me tell you, it's only Wednesday and I am back in the grocery business. This week game is like the first time ever. A rookie in his first game.

The only way to get rid of that rookie feeling is at about 5.30 Friday afternoon go charging up those four flights of steps to the press box as if I way running through the banner that the cheerleaders will have on the field for the players.

Hope I don't pull a hammy!