6 P.M. Football Game

By NANCY GIBBS

Friday night, football night, feels more like June than October. You expect to see some leftover fireflies, the air is so warm. The kids are still in shorts, the scoreboard is twinkling, the week is finally over. Everyone is coming to the game.

The varsity cheerleaders, 14 strong tonight, do their pregame psych-up at Natalie Rodriguez's house in North Webster. Destiny's Child blares on the CD player, and between trips to the bulging buffet table, two black girls teach the others how to get down to the music. Junior Sarah Budzinski gets a plate of cake smashed in her face in early celebration of her 17th birthday tomorrow. After dinner, Natalie's mom braids their hair, brown and blond alike, into cornrows. "Whenever my mom used to braid my hair," says senior Ann Barnes, "she'd say the more it hurts, the prettier it is." A minute later, her light, silky hair in Ms. Rodriguez's firm hands, Ann turns beet red, clenches her teeth and yells out, "OOOUUUCHHH!!!"

Just after 6, more than an hour before kickoff, the team is in the locker room, and the mood stinks. The players seem distracted, off balance. Behind closed doors, Bobby Granderson and wide receiver Chuck Walker are brutal to their teammates. "You better get your minds straight," Chuck says, his voice growing louder. "We won last week. We're doing good. But you're walking around like you're f______ lost." By the time Coach Ice comes in, the players are quiet. He didn't like all the stupid mistakes in last week's game. "It's nice to be home," he says. "Just remember, we don't give away anything at our own house."

By now the stands are filling, as the teams line up to sing the National Anthem. Emmanuel Simmons, a lineman, takes one last shot from his asthma inhaler. Quarterback Karl Odenwald makes passing motions with his arm. As the announcer names the starters in tonight's game, the fans in the stadium scream for Bobby.

Clap your hands, everybody, the cheerleaders chant, and fluff their pom-poms.

Everybody clap your hands.

We're W.G. going all the way.

The best in the land.

Ten seconds into the game, Webster scores. Senior Patrick Hunt is up in the stands, giving science teacher Marty Walter a hard time. She could pass for a student herself, but to him she's still Mrs. Walter, and it's weird to see her here, out of the box, not talking in that biology voice. "It'll be easier after you graduate," she tells him. "What," he says, "like, we're going to be friends with you guys?" and she laughs and says, "Nah, we don't want you as friends either," and you realize these are the teachers who are your friends for life.

Math teacher Eric Dunn has been wearing a Webster football jersey all day, No. 13, a walking ad for his student Karl Odenwald. Peter and Sally, her hair in pigtails, arrive together and sit in the very front. Mr. Winingham strolls by with his 11/2-year-old, who looks like an escapee from a Caravaggio painting. Sally starts playing with the child, getting in touch with her inner mom. Mr. Yates is with his two children and wife, Webster class of '85, and his in-laws, who were homecoming king and queen back in 1960.

The teachers are here in force, and the parents, little brothers and sisters, a baby dressed in tiger colors. Alums come back to watch their children play. And as the first half unrolls, they are playing if not well, then at least successfully.

The game is big and sloppy and wonderful to watch. With Northwest ahead 14-13, Karl makes a fine pass to Bobby, but the ball squirts through his hands. On the next play, Webster's Rodney Trevino catches a pass and scores. On the next series, Bobby, now playing defense, is determined to make up for his bobbled pass. He hammers a Northwest player, causing him to fumble. Webster's Raken Stamps recovers the ball and runs it into the end zone. Score: 27-14.

Nurse Lynn Buss and her husband, who have put three football-player sons through Webster Groves, wince whenever someone takes a good hit. She knows them by name and by injury. "Look, Matt Koch is playing," she points out. "He had an injured vertebra last year." She erupts when junior Jerry Bailey scores. "Hey, that guy was in my clinic at 4 yesterday pretending he was sick! That little stinker."

Detective Dave Dreher's sport jacket and slacks are gone. Tonight he's in uniform, badge and gun plainly visible, working the parking lots. "Oh, high school days," he sighs as he orbits the stadium grounds. "Hey, what's your name, and where do I know you from?" Dreher asks a kid lurking outside the field. "I think you know me from getting into trouble, little things," the boy says sheepishly.

It's bigger things that have Dreher worried tonight. Just a few blocks away, a neighbor spotted a gun being passed to two white males in a Chrysler Le Baron. Though there's nothing to link the incident to Webster Groves High, he's scouring the parking lot for the car.

Faye Walker, Suspension Lady, patrols the sidelines in a white Statesmen T shirt, walkie-talkie in hand. "Don't make me work too hard!" she yells at a group of sophomores who have overfilled their section of stands and are climbing over the security bar. "You know," she says, "there are some people who came out here to see the game." But not many. The crowd is carbonated, all noisy and fizzed, relieved, distracted. Kids are focused on planning the postgame show: "Are you going to be at Rob's?" "How do you get there?" "Are his parents home?" One student is walking up to all the girls. He has a lilac ribbon pinned on that says KISS ME, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY. One girl says that it's not his birthday, but everyone obliges him anyway.

Matt Gewinner sits by himself. He says he's been thinking about his own death. Presently a girl sits down next to him and asks him what's up. He tells her that he's bummed. "Don't be bummed!" she says in a bubbly voice. She gives him a hug.

At half time Webster is way ahead, 48-14. As the players jog off the field, a girl screams, "Bobby! Bobby!" But Bobby doesn't hear her. He still hasn't got his touchdown. In the locker room, Coach Ice throws cold water on them. "I don't want to be happy beating a bad football team by four touchdowns. If we play a good team, we can't do crap like this. I want to play good football all the time."

When half time is over, Principal Voss corrals kids back into the stands. "There are parents and alums who are always here, always in the same seats," she says. Then she pauses, looking out over the field. "The kids always say they can't wait to get away from here," she remarks, with the knowing tone of one who has seen generations seep through her school, "but they always end up coming back."

Town-council member Charles Schneider graduated in 1967, and he knows how much has changed since then. The stands used to be packed for home games. "Now, so many things compete for their time," he says. "People watch so much TV now, or they go off somewhere in their car. When I was a kid, we stayed close to home in our parties, our socializing. Now its common for kids to drive a long way, to go downtown. I went there maybe once when I was a teenager."

We ain't scared, we ain't cocky. Gonna ride over you like a Kawasaki.

Hey, zoom, zoom.

Senior Zach Wood is still trying to get his head around the prospect of his dad's wedding tomorrow. At this point he says he's "cool with it." He is sitting with a friend who is trying to convince him that he should not take next year off. "College is good. Go to college," she implores. He tells her, "I'm going to junior college because I have no idea what I want to do, and I refuse to pay a four-year college tuition when I could pay a fraction of that and figure out what I want to do."

Beth Perez is on a date tonight, sort of. She's wearing gray slacks and a black shirt that shows a little midriff, with black dress sandals. A boy spills cookie crumbs down her cleavage, to her disgust. She's got one eye on the game and one on a junior soccer player whom she kissed at a party last weekend. They spent the first part of the game sitting with their friends; then, after half time, they find a spot of their own. However, since everybody knows everybody here, she ends up very near a party including Mrs. Walter, the biology teacher. A discussion of flatulence, led mostly by the adults, ensues.

We are (clap, clap) Web-ster (clap, clap).

The second half is crushing, merciless. Webster scores again and again, Finally, finally, Beth's swain puts his arm around her. But time has been ticking down. Just as he does it, defensive back Carl Whittaker intercepts and runs from his own 10 all the way down the field and scores as the clock runs out. Beth leaps up and screams, and the boy's arm slides off--for now. Webster wins 61-14. The crowd whoops, the cheerleaders kick, parents, including Bobby's, run out onto the field to grab their smelly kids and hug them.

The crowd pours out the gates into the parking lots, into the night. A few players linger, savoring the sheer size of the win. When the last of the stadium lights goes out, Bobby leaves with his friends, once again without that touchdown. Karl, the quarterback, rides home in his parents' van. Three taxis arrive to take home the vts kids who play on the team but live in St. Louis.

At 10:30 p.m. the field is empty, and the last students are spilling out of the parking lot, windows down and music blaring. Principal Voss huddles in the center of the parking lot with assistants Clark, Raimondo and White, and Detective Dreher. "You almost work 24 hours a day at this job," says John Raimondo. "I've been going since 6 this morning." For her part, P.V.'s school day started at 5:45, "but it's pretty normal for me to leave this late on a Friday."

"Good weekend, John," she says, and makes her benedictions. And as they climb into their cars, one by one, the walkie-talkies are finally turned off.

--N.G.