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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Small-Town Spirit Shines With Football

They play high school football on real grass in Wilbur.

So it didn’t take long Friday afternoon for some of the blue-jerseyed Wilbur-Creston Wildcats and red-jerseyed Davenport Gorillas to sport green stains on their white pants.

“Go! Fight! Win!” chanted the Davenport cheerleaders.

Over on the Wilbur-Creston side, spectators heard every word as a coach briefly yelled at a player.

Welcome to prep football, small-town style.

From the home team’s tiny wood-plank grandstands at Metcalf Field, you can see silos in one direction and cattle in the other. When the wind was blowing a certain way, you could breathe in agricultural ambiance.

Maybe one out of three parked vehicles was a pickup. Several carried loads of fertilizer or feed.

Up on Highway 2, not far from the field, hay trucks dotted the stream of traffic.

A couple of dozen adults watched from the stands on the Wilbur side. For the most part, the schoolkids in attendance looked on from down on the field. Right next to the sidelines.

“C’mon, Mike! Make that kick!”

Both groups were divided between people intensely following the action and those who had come to socialize.

“Her name’s Alissa?” one teenage girl said to another. “I thought it was Lisa.”

“No, Alissa.”

There were lots of updates on who is going out with whom.

A guy with a video camera marked “For Academic Use Only” taped the on-field action.

Wilbur-Creston drove for a touchdown on the team’s first possession. And a woman wearing a “Wildcat Mom” shirt let out a yelp that must have reverberated across much of western Lincoln County.

But it wouldn’t prove to be the home team’s day.

After the second quarter, the scoreboard showed Davenport ahead, 12-6.

At halftime, the visitors walked off the field and piled into their yellow school bus. And the Wilbur-Creston players repaired to a decent-sized prefab shed.

The home team’s no-uniforms pep band stood on the track surrounding the field and courageously blatted its way through a few songs.

Out on the well-tended grass gridiron, several teenagers in jeans and T-shirts tossed a football. And about half a dozen little boys chased and tackled each other.

, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that visits gatherings in the Inland Northwest.

Being There is a weekly feature that visits gatherings in the Inland Northwest.