Growing Up in a Football Family
Get out your fan gear and unfurl those team flags, it’s time for football!
It’s almost fall, y’all! This time of year has always tickled my senses. The smell of crisp air as the temperature cools down, leaves starting to revive their pumpkin patch palette, and the feel of alpaca and mohair while re-arranging the closet to get ready for yummy sweater weather. When I was a child, like most households in the 1950s and ’60s, activities in our home revolved around my dad’s job. Fall in our home centered around football. From my earliest memories, a spirited buzz spread as we neared the season’s kickoff and the excitement ratcheted up with the sound of marching bands and cheerleaders as we took our seats in the bleachers for the first game.
They called my dad “the legendary Ed Henry” in the football drama Remember the Titans. At the time of the story, he was the head coach at Marshall High School in Falls Church, VA — the team that played the T.C. Williams Titans for the championship game at the end of the film. Dad used to laugh talking about how that film brought him more recognition for one loss than he got for all his wins put together.
And win he did. He coached football, baseball, and track at five high schools during his 41-year career that also included coaching stints at Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia. His high school football teams won 159 games including eight district, seven county, three regional, and one state championship. In 1965 he was named Coach of the Year for the State of Virginia. We lost dad to Alzheimer’s in 2015 but before he battled that horrific disease, he was around to accept hall of fame honors from Marshall High School, the Fairfax County, and the Virginia High School League Hall of Fame and was posthumously honored by Annandale High School in its first Hall of Fame ceremony a few years ago.
Learning Strategy
Dad, or Ed as my children called him, taught me the basics of the sport when I was about three or so. Sitting at the dining room table, he used a salt and pepper shaker placed across from each other to teach me about offense versus defense. When I was a little older, he’d draw plays on a yellow legal pad to demonstrate how downs worked. I’d been attending games since I was a baby so I picked up the fundamentals fast.
One of my fondest childhood memories was being a cheerleading mascot at Annandale High School when I was six. I was in awe of the captain of the squad whose name was Gloria, a name I’d use years later for my alter ego when I took a two-week road trip through gold rush towns in California “in character” as Gloria. Dad’s team at Annandale won the state championship when I was in sixth grade. During that season he took me on scouting trips with him. I jotted notes in a statistician’s book and begin learning more intricacies of the game. When we were asked to submit our dream profession to be published in our sixth grade yearbook, I wrote, “The first female professional football coach.” That was a far-fetched notion in 1965. If I were a sixth grader today I might say my dream job would be to host a sports show, a la Kay Adams on NFL Network’s Good Morning Football. I love watching that fun crew and admire Kay’s fervor and smarts. It took 50 years after I was in sixth grade for a woman to coach in the NFL. Jen Walter technically claimed that position as an intern for the Arizona Cardinals. By the end of last season, there were eight women coaches and 12 female scouts in the NFL. I would make a great scout!
Sunday Film Night
Growing up, I got to study game films with dad’s teams. Back then there weren’t restrictions about coaching on weekends or having players come to your house so every Sunday night cars lined up on our street as the players showed up for a spaghetti dinner cooked by my mom. After dinner, in our basement, the team would watch the previous Friday’s game film with dad providing commentary. I would creep down in the dark and sit on the basement steps to watch, listen, and learn more about the game. At the end of the film coaching session, my sisters and I would pass out brownies to the players, also baked by mom.
Another fond Sunday memory was sitting next to dad in the pew at church, watching him draw Xs and Os and play routes on the back of the the worship bulletin.
In my senior year in high school, I was the statistician for my high school’s football team. I would hurry home after every game and call all the local papers to report the stats, often getting into conversations with the sportswriters about predictions for the teams around our region. When I started college at Virginia Tech I interned in the sports information department. By that time I’d decided I wanted to be a sports writer/photographer combo. Life has thrown me many audibles since then so I did not pursue that career, but I never lost my passion for the sport.
Dad was the youngest head coach in the state of Virginia at my mom’s high school, Mount Vernon in Alexandria when they met. As the love story goes, the day she graduated he called to ask her out and they eloped three months later. Mom (Roberta) later became a swimming coach. Ed and Roberta had five children (I’m the oldest) and we all participated in sports. We’ve also got a competitive streak that has been passed down to the next generation.
We lost Dad in 2015 and Mom in 2016. One of the hardest moments for my siblings and me as we packed up their house was going through the trophies and taking down their many plaques off the walls. Their spirits are always with us, but probably with more intensity during football season. I can still feel dad’s energy pacing the sidelines and hear my mom screaming from the stands, her hands red and raw from clapping so hard.
Living in the Cities of Champions
As an adult, I’ve moved multiple times with my children. They were all born at McGee Woman’s Hospital in Pittsburgh and are all still rabid Steeler fans even though we moved out of the Iron City when they were very young. I lived in Pittsburgh through three Super Bowl wins (1976, 1979, and 1980) and was working at the Unversity of Pittsburgh when Pitt won the National Championship in 1976.
After nine years in Pittsburgh, I moved with my young children back to Virginia and the pro team of my youth. Washington made it to the Super Bowl our first year in Virginia (1984), but lost. However, they won again in 1988 while we were there.
Our next move was to Palo Alto, California in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area, this time as the 49ers were coming off their back-to-back Super Bowl wins of 1989 and 1990. That team was led by Joe Montana. It would be a few heart-wrenching years but in 1995 they won the Super Bowl again, helmed by Steve Young.
I moved to the Atlanta Metro Area during the 2014–2015 football season. Two years later, the Falcons made it to the Super Bowl (a painful memory) and bruised their way back into the playoffs the following year. And though I am often teased about the number of teams I root for, I have fully adopted the Dirty Birds and wear my red and black proudly on game day. #RiseUp!
Truth be told, like many people, I cheer hardest for all my fantasy players no matter what team they’re on!
Family Fantasy Football League
In 2018 we started a multi-generational family fantasy football league. Even though I was a rookie Fantasy player when we started, I’m the commissioner for our league and tackle this role with gusto! I even built a custom website for our league this year so I can post special commissioner awards and other fun features. Spread out over four time zones, we are three sisters, one brother-in-law, four of Ed’s grandchildren, a nephew’s fiance, and my daughter’s colleague and very good friend. Dad would get a kick out of this!
We’re only a few weeks away from declaring our Keeper players and holding our 2021 draft. Last year, COVID added a few challenges to our rosters each week, especially since players started going out on COVID IR and games got moved around before our fantasy platform decided how to deal with it. This year could be even more challenging with the NFL’s strict COVID guidelines, stating they will not move games around, and a team that has to postpone due to COVID affecting any unvaccinated players will forfeit their game and be fined. I’m happy to report that just this week my Atlanta Falcons were the first NFL team to be 100% vaccinated and the Las Vegas Raiders announced they will require proof of vaccination for fans to attend games. I mean c’mon man, get your damn vaccine!
At the start of the very first game of every season, whether on the sidelines, in the stands, in the press box, or watching on television, I still get chills at the sight of players re-emerging from the tunnels onto the field and lining up for the kickoff. With the 2021 season just weeks away, I’m full of hope for another championship team to call my own.
