With apologies to the Wildcats...

My story may not sound like it, but I'm going to try and convince you to go see high school sports. I grew up in Walden, Colorado. It's just south of Wyoming. It's a very isolated and small town of about 600 people. There are no stoplights, no fast food, no movie theaters or shopping malls, but there is one thing: sports.

Basketball is the king, and volleyball is popular too, and then…there’s football. There’s a reason football is lower on the ladder. It’s not indoors. By October the windswept prairies open up to winter and it blows right through your soul. But still, in the driving snow of about 8200 feet, there'd be our anemic little team taking the field. During my senior year we had 13 guys for an 11-man squad. This meant everybody got to play. You’d think all that practice would make us better, but for some reason, maybe it’s the high altitude, we didn’t grow all that big.

I wish I could paint a more romantic picture of the Friday Night Lights, but we didn't have lights. Unfortunately, we did have a scoreboard. One of our losing scores was 72-20, and I remember a 62 to 13.

The other teams were from bigger towns. They'd pull up with two buses full of kids. We’d stand in the blowing snow and watch them unload like a dark version of that clown car trick. And the consequences were dire. Many who watched our games thought the ambulance was our mascot. We were everybody’s homecoming. Every town we pulled into was decorated with balloons and streamers. We were often part of their parades. I still get nervous when I see little kids in face paint.

But still, people huddled on the 2x12s that made for our bleachers. Here it was, freezing cold, and our elders sat on boards in the snow to see their loved ones run over by a man-child from Laramie. Maybe it was more of a schadenfreude thing but they were there. So how does this help you turn off the TV and go to a high school game? I can guarantee this: 90 percent of the world has a better climate than Walden, and based on my junior-senior football record, I can say most of the football teams would be less painful to watch. It doesn’t even need to be football. You could be indoors at a volleyball game. But go, I’m pretty sure the concessions are cheaper and I know the tickets are. And you could be witnessing history, or at least something that will have you fondly thinking of your own.