October is magic anyway…

Summer weather has mostly packed it in, but it always goes kicking and screaming. Hoodies are out of the closet; the heater makes that hum along with that smell the first time you turn it on.
 
And though a lot of this past week was Homecoming Hangover, it doesn't take kids long to regain the magic. True, adults may need a trip to the lake house but give one of our young ones a catnap and a Fantasy Football trade, and they're restored before your very eyes.
 
Our campus is mostly empty as you write this, but you can stare out at Baker field and picture an entire football team racing across it in celebration to hug their fan faithful. 
 
Injuries – it had a pretty good chance of happening then – but boys will be boys and that's one sentence that can't be refuted regardless of what end of the hugs you're on.
 
October is magic, and it's also the month where postseason is beckoning. Our softball team is currently dodging the effects of a hurricane in trying to make another run. Volleyball has faced – literally – the best on the other side of the nets.
 
Cross country is calling for a coach bus before the team invades Huntsville, making room lists and checking them twice – but now competing in "runnable" degrees instead of the 90-plus with dust coming off the river dirt.
 
"You can just feel it…" 
 
You've said that, heard that, and most importantly – and maybe more so than in your prior 22-plus years, you feel it now around these parts. 
 
True, the kings and queens of Homecoming life have been crowned, the nervous freshmen have already made their signs in hoping the potential date said yes. The balloons have popped, deflated.
 
But the air remains in this October. 
 
Just last night, you of normally calm nature, couldn't wait to get to your local restaurant and scream about how good this football team is. A man asked if we would ever get good enough to play teams like Lovett.
 
You had visions of getting arrested for assault and battery – the Honorable Chief Green presiding with handcuffs and a car equipped with blue lights.
 
But no – this is the time to step up instead of being shut in.
 
Because October is magic – if you close your eyes, you can picture Rylee Swain soaring above a volleyball net – you can hear her hand smack that poor defenseless ball, while this more than solid defense scatters around her.
 
Those softball girls are few, but they are a feisty few – and give them at least nine or ten players and they'll battle come hell or high water – and you get a few goosebumps when writing it all down.
 
As for cross country, you've waited at finish lines for 20 years, yellow pad in hand, recording those times. At this point, you're happy to say you're not waiting as long as you were just a month ago.
 
You laugh picturing Ellison Losin with a medal around her neck bigger than she is – Harris Bradford is starting a collection. Even he doesn't remember where they all came from.
 
And it's an honor after a game to sit among a bunch of sweaty young men – Coach Nick Perrotta looking out over these that have lived in smelly weight rooms, beat the tar out of each other at camp, and now have been making the opponents pay.
 
Magic really is October. And you really can feel it.
 
And it made you want to linger a bit after some of these football wins – as if driving away will make the magic fade with the I-285 mileage.
 
But it doesn't. 
 
And it won't.
 
You can see it in these faces of these boys - slash men while propped up on their helmets. Smiles dominating their faces.  
 
Nope…nothing deflated here.
 
Just magic. 
 
Just October.
 
Go Bears.