Growing Up Without A Home Community

Abstract: High school football in the state of Texas has become out of control. The sport is no longer played for the sake of the school but rather has become a Friday night ritual to these small towns in Texas. The players are no longer just high school kids inter acting in school sports but have now become heroes to these small town communities. Communities simply no longer support their local high school team but rally in pride of their hometown rivalry against another team. School administrators and coaches no longer are teachers and mentors for the kids but are the equivalent to what in professional football are team owners and "real coaches". Parents have become agents and sacrifice their jobs and homes so that their child

A small town life is seen as many things to many different people. Some see living in a small town as a chance for more opportunities; others see it as a blueprint for insanity. However, as I read Thorton Wilder’s Our Town, I perceived his interpretation of said life, as a celebration. Thorton Wilder adds a variety of happy experiences and sense of community and familiarity, which I believe is why the habitants of the town love their home.

Since I have lived in multiple locations as a child and teenager, I had to think about what place to consider as my hometown. I was born in the crazy world of Hollywood, California, although I did not live there for very long. I also lived in other cities while growing up, and chose just one to focus on, San Dimas. Since I had several painful experiences while residing there, I was never crazy about living in San Dimas, for I lived in an area where several people were cruel to me. They would call me names, throw objects at me and threaten to harm me physically. This occurred in my neighborhood and at school. Luckily, I had a small group of friends with whom I explored the city and the surrounding hills nearby. We would hike and find old mines,

The speaker reveals that home beat all and that relocation will inevitably lead our heart to long for our original home. To begin, the speaker expresses her feeling of homesickness for the atmosphere of her hometown. She stated that she feels “homesick for the streets unkempt with crowds of people, overfilled…” (4-6) The diction of “homesick” and the utilization of imagery to describe the business of the streets reveal that

High school football over the years has become a huge spectacle lets just talk about the DWF area or we can even get smaller to make a point if you made a 25 mile radius these local high school teams play at the Star (seats 12,000), Allen stadium (seats 18,000 cost 60 million), and McKinney’s new stadium (seats 12,000 costs 69.9 million). This is just high school football these young kids playing under tremendous pressure from the start. The pressure to play high school football is immense, there are so many media outlets for these kids, and they get coverage from what it seems like all the time during the season, yet this is all just considered a recreational activity I think it has become more than that now. The pressure for coaches is high as well dealing with parents, board members, keeping up with classes as a teacher, and oh you also have to win since football is a performance-based business (forewarning this will be said a lot). For example I will refer to Boobie Miles from Friday Night Lights for one final point. Boobie knew if he did not make it in football there was nothing special for him. That is why when he got hurt he still wanted to play, because he knew that’s all he had. That is a lot of pressure for a 16-18 year to handle, and if they are not up for it they crack.

First, community is our “home.” We have been living in a community ever since we were just little babies and it has always influenced us. Communities have played a big part in who we are today. We start off in school not knowing anyone or anything and as you get older you begin to think about the

Canton, Georgia was the city where I was raised from the time I was seven years old. The quiet neighborhood was where most of my friendships were developed. The majority of my friends rarely left Canton. We attended the same elementary, middle and high schools and played on the same sports teams. My upbringing is what most would consider a normal, American childhood. During the summer before my sophomore year in high school, we were given the opportunity to move to the city of Chicago for one year due to my father’s job which required relocation. That August we moved to Lincoln Park, a neighborhood in the city. Moving to Chicago was a new opportunity to live in a metropolitan city. Since I never lived outside of the suburbs, I was not sure what to expect. Jones College Prep, a highly

Kansas City born and raised in rural Indiana, I did not live and grow up in the same house as most kids around here do. I’ve moved twice in my lifetime and couldn’t be more grateful that we did. My family has made southern Indiana our home now for the last 15 years. I’ve played multiple sports here and with each sport I made more and more friends. When I go back to the city I was born in, I think about how different my life would’ve been if my parents hadn’t decided to move. I would have never gotten the chance to wake up and be surrounded by corn fields every day. I would never have been able to ride fourwheelers in my backyard, mow grass on a riding-mower, or even have a garden. There is privacy here, whereas neighbors in the city can see

I grew up in two very different communities, El Paso, Texas and Olney, Maryland. I spent the first ten years of my life in El Paso, which being home to a military base, was a community with strong military support. For the past seven years, I have lived in Olney, Maryland, a small town with families that have known each other for generations. No one really moves to Olney, most families have deeply established roots here, so when I moved to Olney when I was 10, I was very much an outsider. El Paso was fairly limited to El Paso as far as short trips, but in Olney you can be to D.C or Virginia in about an hour; there is always something new to do. Although Olney and El Paso are quite different, they have both instilled a common value in me, take

Football in some states is treated as a religion more than it is a game. In small towns in Texas, Friday nights in the fall are designated to host a high school football game. It is a ritual to support the hometown team, just as going to church on Sunday mornings. Just as one would find the majority of the town at church on a Sunday morning, the same goes on a Friday Night. The game is the talk of the town at the local restaurants between the old men that have spent their whole lives’ in the same town. They look forward to see what the young men of the town will show on the gridiron that week and how the team has been playing and what to expect in the future. In a small town, the players are decently in close contact with the young children

If there were one thing that shapes my identity the most, it would be my home. For most of my twenty year existence, I lived a fairly comfortable life in the sleepy town of West Salem, Wisconsin. It was the type of town where

Sub-point 1: Football has been a sport I began playing at a very young age, at 10 years old to be exact. It all began when my brother wanted to play a game with his older friends but were short of players, so he invited some of the younger neighborhood kids, myself included, to play. Ever since that one game, we had begun to organize these football games. Just to be clear, these games would take place in our alleyway as it was the closest empty open area. Our games would start roughly around 4pm considering school didn’t end until 2pm and yet still had homework to complete. Either way, we’d play until dark when we were no longer able to see the

I grew up in a suburb of Kansas City for most my life. Two years ago I moved with my parents to a very small town where my dad grew up. Growing up in a larger town has shaped the way I act and feel towards people. In the small town I live in now everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business. That was never the case when I was growing up people minded their own business for the most part.

The tragic loss of these 75 total community members made the Marshall University President Donald Dedmon question keeping the football program. During the triumphs and failures throughout the movie, the football team came together at last and brought the gloomy community back to the up-spirited, football loving community they always were. Upon finishing the movie, I discovered how important college football is to Eastern United States of Appalachia. Finally I came to the question of asking myself: How has sports, in particularly college football, strength the Appalachian communities across these eastern states?

I grew up in Eunice, a small town in south central Louisiana. Growing up in Eunice, as with growing up in any town, big or small, had perks as well as disadvantages. Throughout school, many students of Eunice High as well at St. Edmunds, the only two high schools in town, swore that once graduated, they would move as far away from Eunice as possible. This was because Eunice did not offer the excitement or the opportunities that a larger city could offer to a young adult. While this logic may be true to a certain extent, ten years later there aren't many people that I know of that liberated themselves from Eunice, Louisiana that didn't return some years later. Call it small town comradery, call it being home sick, call it what you will but Eunice