The Danger of a Single Story

Around Montgomery County Maryland there are a few schools known for one thing, football. Schools such as Quince Orchard, Northwest, Damascus, and Sherwood seemed to have a monopoly on Friday nights as they beat other schools by up to 50 points sometimes completely dismissing any form of competition. Growing up in the Quince Orchard community I was prepared for a life dictated by football from a young age. I remember going to football games as a child and waiting to be able to be old enough to join the student section known as the Red Army. Revered and hated throughout the county and state as being the loudest and at times most obnoxious student section in the DMV (depending on who you asked). As a student at Quince Orchard it was expected of you to be at every football game wearing red and screaming your head off. I still remember taking the oath to be sworn in to the Red Army at my first pep ralley as a freshman and repeating after our general that I would wake up every Saturday morning without a voice.

As an eighth grader, being so close to that student section but still not there I was counting down the days till I left middle school and could call myself a Quince Orchard Cougar. So when our football team made it to the 4A State Championship game that year I was pretty pumped. I remember massive caravans leaving from our area and traveling up to Baltimore to watch our high school team play at M&T Bank Stadium against Old Mill. After a rough loss I was impressed by how our team rallied back together and strived to be better next year setting our motto for the still far in the future season as unfinished business. Another thing that has stood with me through that experience is how after coming home from our school’s fall sports awards night that year my Dad and older Brother who had attended for my Brother’s soccer team spoke about how the football coach stayed positive in his speech keeping the spirit of the community bright and hopeful. The next year I remember being beyond excited for every game and as our team moved back to the state final I was ecstatic for our team. I remember our school had a special pep rally for the game and our head coach dressing up in a suit, telling the crowd he was going to a business meeting, and the crowd going wild. After we lost that game again it was hard for the community to pull ourselves back up but I believe that we were able to rally around the coach's attitude after the game and get back into it.

I fully believe that my High School community was defined by our football team and those failed trips to the state championship game. Every year our school was consumed with school spirit throughout the fall season until our team ultimately would fall short in the playoffs. Now I don’t necessarily think that this was a completely bad thing. I think that any school as diverse as ours would have a terribly difficult time finding a common factor that everyone could bond over. For those two or three months of Friday night games the Quince Orchard community was shut down with people gathering together all to support the football team.

Those two trips that we took the the State finals set a precedent for our team, our school and our community that followed in my remaining years of High School, and while there were many benefits of to the community over bonding with the team on Friday nights it also left the community vulnerable throughout the rest of the year and lacking support for other groups in the community. I know at orientation this summer one of our get to know you activities was going around in a circle and talking about how our high school community was defined. This wasn’t something I had thought about a whole lot before but I immediately thought about how our school always rallied together in the fall then seemed to fall apart with everyone settling into their own cliques the rest of the year. The technically two stories of what our football team almost was as well as our team's experiences year after year definitely set a precedent for how our community was defined. While we were able to achieve some good out of the situation ultimately our community was hurt by being defined in a single thing and the thought football was one thing that we could rally around in our community when in reality we had a strong diverse community with many things to offer.