Fargo South only needed that much time to let everyone at Davies Field know they were silly for coming out on such a cold and wet night.
The Bruins were going to beat Fargo Davies. They were going to beat the Eagles by a lot. They were going to keep rolling, the second-ranked team in North Dakota's big-school classification, by beating a team barely a couple years past the imagination stage.
At first I was like...
With wind chills hovering at about 20 degrees all game long, and with a steady snow expected to arrive sometime during the night, the message was pretty clear: This one's over.
Zach Reich's touchdown run just 87 seconds into the game was all the Bruins needed to let everyone know this game was merely a cold, wet formality to putting another notch in their win column.
And yet, a devoted fan base -- not more than maybe 400 people, both schools, combined, in the Davies bleachers, significantly down from the number that filled South's stadium last week for the Bruins' game with West Fargo -- stayed.
The crowd there at the beginning of the game was the crowd there at the end. Cold, snow, wind? A North Dakota high school football fan fears not these things.
And then I was all...
With apologies to Davies fans and players, everyone on the field and in the stands had a pretty good idea of how this one was going to turn out. Even so, the fans stayed. After 87 seconds, after Davies fumbled away possession on its third offensive play of the game, after South recovered a squib kick after its second touchdown, after a Davies shanked punt gave the ball to South on the Eagle 22-yard line and South's James Johannesson scored on the next play to make it 26-0 midway through the second quarter, after halftime when the snowflakes started to fall, after the third quarter when the snow REALLY started coming down and the wind out of the north made passing the ball an awkward afterthought, after sleet started building up on the bleachers and seeping through shoes and coffee and hot chocolate no longer did enough to prevent toes from going numb, the fans stayed.
Random observations: Not many. Too busy trying to stay warm. ... I did notice the Davies PA announcer has an amazing voice. Don't know the dude's name, but he has to have some kind of broadcasting background. Any Davies fans who can fill me in?
Next week: Devils Lake at West Fargo. First home game I'll see for my hometown Packers.
--patrick
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