news-record.com

When the weather vane spins, and the wind picks up carrying the first hint of autumn in the air, it means one thing and one thing only. When the smell of grass hits you in the evening, and the breeze feels cooler than it should and you think of pulling a sweatshirt out of the cedar chest for the first time in months, it means but one thing.

Football.

All across North Carolina tonight, the stadium lights will go up on high school fields everywhere. Last year's kids are this year's starters. Last year's juniors are this year's stars. And coaches on every sideline will stand and watch and learn along with everyone else.

Despite all the preseason predictions based on last year's success, no one really knows what's going to happen from here on out. Well, other than maybe Charlotte Independence will be good, and Thomasville will be good and most everybody in Alamance County will be good. Beyond that, we just look at the trends, the long-term cycle that defines high school programs over time.

Page will travel to Reynolds tonight, and we hear Reynolds will be good this year. If so, it will be a break in a cycle of down years that go back to the days of Doug Crater and his bruising I-back offense. They say Page will be good, and if that's true it will be a second straight year and the possible beginning of a cycle reminiscent of the days when Marion Kirby walked the Pirates' sideline.

The truth is the cyclical nature of high school football programs has more to do with enrollment and school zones and feeder schools than anything else. Grimsley, like Reynolds, once was one of the best high school football power plants in the South. State titles rolled out of the stadium named for Bob Jamieson, and no one believed the good times would ever end.

They did. They always do. And getting back to the good old days is a lot harder than it was in those good old days. Few people understand that better than Burton Cates, the coach at Eastern Randolph, whose long run in Ramseur is being threatened by a school that didn't exist three years ago. Providence Grove is the new school in Randolph County, and Eastern fans and coaches alike will watch closely this year as former Eastern players line up for the school in Climax.

Is this the year Eastern slips? Or will it be next year? Or the next?

Folks in Thomasville know that big-time success doesn't last forever. Even more so, people in Lexington will tell you when it's over, you're the last to realize it. Who would have ever believed the run at High Point Andrews would end, or the one at Central for that matter? Who thought there would ever come a day when Randleman or Brevard or Robbinsville or West Charlotte would struggle? Who would've predicted the rise of Cherokee or the decline of Rocky Mount?

The trends affect small towns with only one high school and large cities with five. There will be a player at Northern Guilford this season who played for Grimsley last year and Eastern Guilford the year before. There will be kids lining up against the coaches who taught them how to play, kids the coaches picked up from home every day and helped feed and raise only to see them wearing another school's colors.

Textile plants shut down, and families move. Apartment buildings go up, and kids move in and out like military families. Military families move into and out of school zones so quickly that Fayetteville coaches lose kids in the middle of the season, every season.

The winds shift, and everything changes. Kannapolis Brown. Swain County. Starmount. Wilson Fike. 71st.

Central. Page. Reynolds. Lexington.

The names change, and they stay the same. The coaches and principals and athletics directors fight it every year, always one year too late. Good things come to those who wait. And bad things happen to those who wait too long.

A lot of people will watch the Page-Reynolds game tonight and try to gauge the future. A lot of people will watch Dudley against a withering schedule and try to predict a season.

Over in Randolph County, a lot of people will be watching Eastern and thinking about Providence Grove. And there's a newer school still opening next year, and people in Asheboro and Climax and all the places in between will be wondering which way the winds of change will blow after that.

But all of that will take care of itself. For now, the only thing in the air is the smell of grass and the first sounds of fall -- the horn blast, the sound of cleats on sidewalks and cheerleaders on sidelines and whistles echoing off the stadium seats.

Football season begins tonight here and most everywhere in North Carolina. And just like every year, nothing will ever be the same again.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com