By JAMES BROWN
Glasgow Daily Times
GLASGOW —
This is written prior to Friday night’s football game between Barren County and Glasgow, so don’t take this as commentary on the game that was played. Take this as an observation based on things seen prior to Friday’s game.
What I’ve seen is a new commitment to better football at both schools. Athletics should never be placed before academics in a student’s education, but as an opportunity to a better educational experience for a student. The same can be said for any extracurricular activity.
Football is a sport that is high maintenance, from the equipment to the number of students involved. What that means is that it is a sport that requires a hefty financial commitment from both the school district and the parents involved. It requires a great deal of planning and organization by the coaches, the administration and the parents. It requires a larger support staff than most other sports. And it requires not just lip service to excellence but actual hard labor toward that ideal in order to reach it.
What stood out to me since watching Glasgow and Barren County in the T.J. Samson Community Hospital Bowl is that there has been a commitment to the pursuit of excellence on the football field. For Barren, that fact was even more evident in the game last week at Trojan Field against Bullitt Central. The players were prepared for what Bullitt was going to throw at them and the Trojans’ defense responded. The game could have been out of hand for Barren in the first half, but it wasn’t and that opened the door for the rousing second-half comeback.
We saw much of the transition last year for Glasgow with the greater emphasis of getting the community involved with the team and the program and the result was a turnaround season. The expectation is that this will be a breakout year for the Scotties.
My hope going into Friday’s bragging rights game was to see a good game. I believed ahead of time it would happen.
James Brown is editor for the Daily Times. He can be reached by e-mail at jbrown@glasgowdailytimes.com.
