Putting fight in Irish

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Sep 21, 2008 by Barbara Hollingsworth

By Barbara Hollingsworth

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

CHAPMAN -- From 5th and Broadway, the view is little like it was the last time Chapman High School's marching band and dance team began their traditional march to the football stadium for a home game.

At one corner sits the high school, its auditorium ripped away. On another corner is the Lutheran Church with some of its limestone walls torn up. To the north, one house is repaired, while on the other corner, a home's foundation sits empty and a stop sign is pinned to the sidewalk by a rock.

By now, students are used to the view. They are used to the trailers that provide the bulk of classroom space for Chapman's high school, middle school and elementary school. They are used to the steady stream of gawkers who even three months after the tornado hit still drive slowly through town looking at everything that is gone.

These days, Chapman clings to the small victories, which is why this first home football game in a stadium with lights that switch on for the first time an hour before the 7 p.m. kickoff takes on another level of importance.

"It's just good to have a home game after everything we've been through," says Tracy Keating, who sits high in the repaired stands at the football stadium. "It's good to be home."

Across town, the band and dance team fall into lines behind a police escort to the stadium. They march east and then north, nearly the same path taken by the tornado. As they march, they pass by all of the missing homes -- entire streets wiped bare. Finally at the stadium, they march past high school principal Kevin Suther.

Suther points up at the new lights. After lots of talk that the game time might have to be moved up, the last of the newly installed lights clicked on at 6 p.m.

"We had an hour," he says calmly. "The sound system was done by 4. That was three hours (early)."

After the tornado hit, the future of the football stadium was iffy. The twister took the press box and destroyed the concession stand's roof. The field itself was scattered with debris picked up on the tornado's journey across town.

Over the summer, a magnet was run over the field, and volunteers crawled through the grass searching for any small but potentially dangerous tornado leftovers.

"When you look at it, it's just great," Suther said, admiring the thick green grass.

The stands overflow. People in Chapman joke that when the lights are on at the stadium, they are out in the rest of town.

Head football coach Jeff Schwinn figured the first home game would be bigger than homecoming. Hours before the game, players sat silently at desks in two of the trailer classrooms and ate chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy. Before each was a white sheet of paper with an inspirational paragraph in large type.

"Vision," it read in part, "has no boundaries and knows no limits. Our vision is what we become in life."

The Fightin' Irish started the season with a loss but bounced back with a 27-0 win against Council Grove. Friday night's opponent, Concordia High School, hadn't won yet.

For the Irish, expectations run high. The football team has won or tied for the league championship for the past three years. Players have received individual league honors -- not that quarterback Skip Mayberry can find those medals now. They are among the things missing after the tornado hit his house, tearing it open like a two-story doll house.

Maybe it is the tornado or the fact that Skip is senior, but his dad, Mark Mayberry, a football coach for 10 years in Chapman, senses something different in moments like a high school football game.

"I think you cherish them more," he said.

The Irish score first and fast. A short run up the middle by Matt Krinhop, a junior.

Concordia answers with a touchdown on the kick return -- a morale- defeating score for Chapman.

In the stands, Keating looks on the field for his sons, players Kurtis and Derrick. The community, he said, needs this. They need a chance to get together for fun and not to clean up debris or worry about how they will be allowed to rebuild. A chance to break away from months of exhaustion, shock and worry. Perhaps, that is why he senses from fans an even stronger desire -- almost a need -- for a win.

"I think there is a lot of pressure on the players this year," he said.

Skip Mayberry, who plays most downs as quarterback and on defense, senses the pressure, too. On the field, the older players tell the younger guys to play "Irish football." The older players have all played through tough times before. Two years ago, their friend Wade Beemer was killed in a car accident on the way to their first football practice. Wade would have been a senior this year.

You know what you are capable of, Skip and other seniors say on the field, and this isn't it.

"We wanted to win," Skip said. "We knew what the community has been through."

Even as the game stretches farther out of reach, fans dressed in green linger in the stands. In the dark behind the stadium where rows of trailers sit for middle school students, the next generation of Fightin' Irish football players throw footballs and tackle each other. They run around the old light poles in a field with end zones that only they can see.