Texas Exploring / Friday Night Lights

Michael and I spent the evening with our siblings (my brother and his sister) watching our friends’ kids’ school football game. (Complicated much?) We literally (and I don’t use that word lightly) couldn’t pick our jaws up off the floor for the whole game. None of us had been to such an enormous production!

There were around around 7,000 people there for the Klein Oak vs. Klein Collins district football game. You can see from the photo above, the football team itself was so many kids! Then there were strutters (still unclear what they were all about) and their dads dancing, the 200-strong marching band, some interpretive dancers, a rifle team (also unclear), and countless support staff making it run smoothly for live television! A serious, serious production. None of these photos are spectacular, but I want to remember the absolute spectacle of this football game for years to come. I’ve never seen anything like it! The marching band had fifteen xylophones, for crying out loud!  The strutters (dancers, maybe?) performed a hilarious 80’s dance with their dads. Can you see some of those (blurry) leaping splits in that photo above?! Those weren’t the dads, but the dads were working it, too! We had such a laugh watching them all put in maximum effort for their performance.  There was some football played, of course, in addition to all the other entertainment, although when we left in the third quarter our team, the Klein Oak Panthers, were getting creamed. Better luck next time, guys!  That stand on the right is where that whole band came from! Almost every seat in the stadium was full.  At one point, they blew up these giant creatures for the teams to run out of to come on for the second half, led by waving flags. It was insane!

If you’re ever in Texas during football season, find the most important game you can and park it in the stands. The Klein school district north of Houston has serious entertainment value, even if you don’t know much about football!