This past weekend, Western had one of its best Homecoming Weekend crowds ever–certainly the best I’ve seen. Downtown was packed for the parade, and our stadium was filled with purple-clad Catamounts. We were playing SoCon rival Mercer, the first-placed team, and a victory would earn Western its first conference championship in university history.

It was guaranteed to be a huge game, and it quickly become a high-scoring back-and-forth. Soon it seemed the team that scored last was going to take it all. With 1:30 left on the clock, WCU drove the ball down field, finding our way within field goal range with just seconds left. Western missed the kick, and Mercer won the day.

I posted the following on the Catamount Sports message board:

I wanted to get a good night’s sleep before posting about this game. Here’s what I think.

We won.

Well–we almost won. For five or ten seconds, I was convinced we’d won. Weren’t you? The kick looked great from where I was standing. I saw the fans rushing the field. It was the perfect moment, the consummation of a frenetic game, the back and forth, trading touchdowns, the highs and lows. The missed tackles, the defensive stands, the things that worked and didn’t work, it had all brought us right here, to this moment, with seconds on the clock, everyone standing–wringing hands, jumping up and down with pulses of energy. We had been down–at one point it felt like we were inevitably finished–and then we were at the threshold. 

We were about to win this game. It was if we had spoken everything into existence: all of the what-ifs, all of the hopes, a week of speculation, everything coming true. For just a few, brief seconds, the kick looked to have split the uprights, the crowd exploded in delight, students rushed onto the field. Victory was ours.

And then, it wasn’t.

It reminded me of another incredible sports moment I had seventeen years ago in the Brick House Tavern in Davidson. I was watching Steph Curry and company try to beat Kansas in the Elite Eight game with an over-capacity crowd of Wildcat fans. Davidson was down two and had the ball with seconds left to play. Steph brought the ball up but Kansas swarmed him, and he chose to pass to Jason Richards, who was forced to shoot from well behind the three-point arc. 

For a brief moment, when the shot was in the air, everyone in the Brick House held their breath. It had to go in. For a moment, we were all convinced that Cinderella was going to keep dancing. Davidson had beaten incredible odds to be where it was. There was a victory in just being there.

But it didn’t. The shot bonked off the backboard, the clock ran out, and Kansas would go on to win the NCAA tournament.

There was plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking about whether Steph should have taken the shot. It didn’t matter of course–the game was over. But Steph trusted his teammate, and he knew his teammate would do a better job than he could.

Last night, we made the right call. You get the ball where you need to get the ball. You commit to a decision. Nobody who put on a WCU uniform last night played a perfect game. Everyone made a mistake or missed an opportunity. That’s absolutely normal. That’s how games are played. Nobody should be ashamed for how this game ended last night.

We won.

In the spirit that our university has had some of the best football seasons in history. In the spirit that we were playing a football game in November that wasn’t just relevant, but critical. In the spirit that the Catamounts were going up against a SoCon rival and we believed we could beat them. We knew we could beat them. 

I try to explain to some of our younger fans just what watching Catamount football has demanded of me emotionally for the last 26 years. I use metaphors like bloodletting. I make allusions to The Machine from the film The Princess Bride (not that they’ve seen it). 

Which is to say that for a lot of my time as a WCU football fan, we’d have had no business having anything resembling an expectation for a game like yesterday’s.

But good golly at the attitude our fans brought to town. There was a mass of purple in the stadium unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Yesterday’s crowd was twelfth-man level. 

Coupled with a parade that had more student involvement than I can remember, a crowd downtown for a parade party that was the biggest we’ve had, a pre-tailgate brunch, official (and more unofficial) reunions for baseball, PRSA, the marching band, and many many many other groups–y’all, there was joy. So much joy in Cullowhee. You couldn’t have built a better weekend.

Yesterday there wasn’t a mass exodus after halftime. Even when we were down by two scores, the crowd stuck with the team. The fans cheered on. The Cats dug in deep. Even after Mercer’s last drive, we somehow found our way down the field. The explosion of energy at the end of the game was real.

You can second guess this decision or that, sure. You and Ian Malcolm can talk about Chaos Theory. Yada yada yada. You cannot deny the fact that Western did everything it could as well as we could. Not perfect, not to the full potential. But as well as we could. As I remind my own daughter when it comes to soccer, there are eleven people on the field, and all eleven win or lose, regardless of where the ball gets kicked. Every player owns a piece of a victory, and every player owns a piece of defeat. Even so…

We won.

If you ever doubted what football could feel like in Cullowhee, yesterday was your answer.

The enormous crowd. People buying and selling tickets in the parking lots. The energy, the pride, the family of purple and gold. The love.

Yesterday was huge, and it proves what’s possible. Every single season we start at 0-0 and have to work our way up and forward. Every single season, people like me are going to ask people like you to commit and recommit, to give and give again, to take off early on a Friday afternoon and find a place to sleep and buy your tickets. 

You certainly remember seasons where you questioned if it was worth it. I do. 

But good gracious look at what is possible. What can still be possible. Who knows what the future holds in the next two games we have to play, but if you aren’t excited about coming out next weekend, if you aren’t still pumped about watching our team play… if you were in that stadium and you didn’t find a spark of belief and hope in your heart… well. I cannot help you. 

Last night was an exhibition, and believe it or not, it can still get better. I’m certain the team is committed just as much to defeat ETSU on Saturday as ever. Yes, Homecoming crowds are always bigger. But at the end of the day, the part that you can play as a loyal fan is crucial to keeping that pulse of energy that we all felt last night alive. 

Keep coming back. Y’all, these are the good days. Never, ever take feelings like these for granted.

Light and life and fond devotion.
James