Play On, Players

The most bizarre place to have been Sept. 11.

 A drive through Vermont is a trip down memory lane. I don't need much excuse to wax nostalgic, and Vermont's landscapes are so striking that they make an impression.

Sometimes, you wonder if people remember things the way you do. I've written about this before. Dramatic car accidents. Fires. A few people are intensely important for a short period, then you never see them again and you wonder if anybody else remembers it the way you do.

Fresh out of college, one of my jobs was to cover high school sports. In early September on my second year on the job, my boss wanted an enterprise piece, a feature on Whitcomb High School. This high school is small, with about 160 students. No school that small had ever repeated as state champions in boys' soccer. It was my job to write a story about that.

I, along with a photographer, was assigned to cover their game on Sept. 11, 2001. You'll read a lot of Sept. 11 remembrances over the next month, so I won't bore you with my story. Everybody's got their tale. It was an exciting day to be a journalist. It was also, of course, horrible.

As I sat in the office, games kept falling off the schedule, canceled because of the tragedy. I kept calling the school. Unbelievably, the school kept saying it was going to play. And so, around 2:30 in the afternoon, I got in my soon-to-brokedown-forever Dodge Duster and drove to Bethel, Vt.

Bethel was at the edge of our coverage area. It was, of course, amazingly beautiful in early fall. It's nestled in a river valley in the Green Mountains. There's a tiny little eco-friendly law school there. I just remember how sunny it was, and that the local rock station was playing NPR, not music.

The Duster rolled down a slight hill to the athletic fields, which were across the street and down a ways from the school, next to the White River. It was around 80 degrees with a slight breeze.

The coach and I talked, kind of normally. The game started and I went over to talk to the athletic director. I don't remember his name. I just remember what he said, when I asked him why they were playing the game: "We wanted to keep things normal for the kids."

The last word I would use to describe that game is "normal."

When I got back to the office, it was dusk. Israel was lobbing missiles at Afghanistan on America's behalf. I sat down at my desk to punch out a game story. There were no other results in our system. I checked state websites. Nothing.

At the least, I covered the only high school game in New Hampshire or Vermont that was played Sept. 11, 2001. It is possible the game was more rare than that. Every pro team canceled its games. Every college team canceled its events.

It is possible I covered the only sporting event in the Northeast that afternoon. Maybe more. I don't know. I don't remember a thing about the game, other than Whitcomb lost. Excluding players, there might have been 30 people there. It's possible it was more like 10 people. I just remember walking over to the river at halftime and sitting by the edge of it in the shade.

I've been writing and editing for newspapers, college and pro, since the fall of 1997. There aren't a lot of regrets. No time for them. Deadline's coming. Chop chop. Write the next one. And the next one.

Driving back from Vermont on Monday, in an area not too far from Bethel, it struck me: Why didn't I write about how weird it was that they played that game? Why did I write about the game itself? I know I wrote about how weird it was, but I don't remember a word I wrote. I'm sure I don't have a clip. The paper doesn't even have a clip, now, thanks to microfilm.

We're all in for a barrage of Sept. 11 nostalgia. Some will talk about a national holiday and others will wonder when we stop making such a big deal out of it. Nine years and 11 months later, I have a different emotion. I want a do-over. I want to call those players and coaches up and write a different story.