The big kid with a red Mohawk stood on the football field, the sun setting on his high school career and tears glistening on his cheeks.
“When I heard the last call in the huddle, I was thinking: ‘I’m going to score.’ And it didn’t happen,” Chatfield High School senior James Skelton said. “But I tried. I tried.”
Then, the 6-foot-2, 195-pound halfback cried. For reasons you might never guess.
Lugging the football on a pure smash-mouth play known as 26 Power, Skelton got stonewalled at the goal line on his final snap of the Colorado state playoffs.
But as he hit the turf with a deflating thump, the scoreboard lights read: Mullen 42, Chatfield 7.
Sometimes, the final score completely misses the point. Although Chatfield lost big, to think these players were beaten would fail to measure what’s truly important in the heart.
One afternoon at practice last week, Chatfield coach Bret McGatlin counted his varsity players. There were 12. The rest were ill, feverish and nauseous from a norovirus that swept through the team. “At first, we didn’t know why they were all getting sick,” he said. “You looked around and tried to see who the survivors were.”
Slightly more than 24 hours before the scheduled kickoff, the Chargers were uncertain health officials would clear them to take the field against Mullen. “There for a while, it looked like a little league team, we had so few players,” Chatfield senior Chance Mankowski said.
The Chargers wanted no excuses. Asked for zero pity. They got out of sick beds and stood tall, even as highly ranked Mullen relentlessly punished them and slowly grew a narrow halftime lead to the inevitable rout.
What was learned on this one Saturday of defeat will long serve them as businessmen, fathers and neighbors who won’t quit, no matter what.
“They’re resilient. These kids, you can’t tell them ‘no.’ Because they’re going to find a way to do it anyway,” McGatlin said.
Life is not a Hollywood movie, where the scrappy underdogs see their spunk rewarded with a dramatic, happy ending. There was something far more real, noble and inspiring, however, as Skelton strained to score a touchdown that would have changed nothing.
“We wanted to get our senior running back in the end zone one last time, And we couldn’t do it,” McGatlin said. “It was tough. But watching him walk away, seeing how much this player hurt, told me how much he cares.”
Here was the bittersweet beauty of prep sports, as crystal clear as an adolescent tear. Seniors on the team have grown to the size of men. But, when their hearts break, the little boys in them come spilling out.
“I know all these guys have heart,” said Skelton, who, the same as many of his buddies, dyed his hair in school colors. “But I wouldn’t be on any other team, even if I could. I love every last one of these guys. And I’m going to miss ’em.”
This band of football brothers from Chatfield coaxed sick teammates through a hellacious week and got a bigger, faster, stronger Mullen team as their reward.
It was win. Or go home.
Undefeated Mullen moved on, quickly piling on the team bus after the victory, rolling down the road with championship dreams intact.
The losers are the ones who always linger, because what’s lost is more than a game. It hurts to say goodbye to friendships never to be duplicated, while knowing a huge chunk of your childhood will be packed away with the helmets and shoulder pads.
“You never forget. Not any of it,” Mankowski said.
After fans emptied the stadium and Mullen 42, Chatfield 7 stayed frozen on the scoreboard, the late afternoon shadows began to grow.
Still wearing his red uniform, Mankowski plopped down on the 15-yard line alongside fellow senior A.J. Quintana.
They looked young. Felt older. Sitting side by side in the matted, mud-scarred grass, two boys from Chatfield caught the final rays of sunshine in their prep football careers, refusing to go home.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
