High school football Friday

I moved to my current residence in Columbia, MD, a little over a year ago. Where I live puts me almost equidistant between two local high schools - Wilde Lake (alma mater of actor Edward Norton and former Oriole Jim Traber) and Atholton (alma mater of Greg Hawkes of The Cars). Tonight, I'm planning to attend the Atholton football game against nearby Mt. Hebron, which went 0-10 last year despite having sent defensive end Aaron Maybin on to Penn State just a couple years before.

Anyway, I haven't decided yet whether I'm an Atholton fan or a Wilde Lake fan. They play each other on Oct. 3 and I hope to decide by then. Wilde Lake is more of a local power, although Atholton was a respectable 7-4 last year. I think I'm leaning toward Atholton just because that seems more like my neighborhood - I shop at the town center just down the road from the school on a regular basis. But I hope to get into the habit of going to Friday night games fairly regularly in the fall.

I tried going to a Washington-Lee game in Arlington when I lived there but it wasn't much of a game. This seems to be a more serious high school football area than the close-in Virginia suburbs.

Really, growing up, there wasn't much Friday night football on the Philadelphia Main Line. I went to Lower Merion, where football attendance was pretty sparse despite usually respectable teams, and my recollection is that most games were played on Saturday afternoon or even Saturday morning. I know that is changing in the Philadelphia suburbs - there seem to be a lot more Friday night games, and a number of late Friday afternoon games.

Maybe high school football is becoming a bigger deal in the Philadelphia area. But when I was growing up in the '80s, other than Bucks County, high school football didn't seem like a very big deal. I know it was a culture shock when I got to Penn State and saw how much it mattered to kids from other parts of the state - and I think I missed out growing up in area much more focused on pro sports.