It wasn’t the ideal weekend for us to get together, but it worked out great anyways. At least it did for me.

Steve was in town for the sorrowful reason of seeing his wife’s father laid to rest. The service completed on Friday (well-attended and honored by the words of his children), Steve had texted me late this morning. “Wanna go to the Eldorado game today?” Eldorado, our high school alma mater, was playing Cibola High School in a division playoff game. “Yeah.” “Meet you at Blake’s.” Now living out of the state, Blake’s was a critical stop for Steve, and not frowned upon by myself.

Arriving in the stadium a few minutes after the contest had started (and after a kind man at the adjacent ticket window heard my pathetic plea to the lady to cover a two dollar shortage and thoughtlessly threw down two bills before me), we the loud walk south in front of our fans until we mounted the stairs for a far section and took seats on a bench near the top. The stadium, sitting under the golden light of a cool winter afternoon sun, was vivid and vibrant. Our side of the stadium was pretty full and chatty and animated, and across the field in the opposing stands, a thinner base filled two-thirds of the benches. On the field, the Eldorado Eagles, decked in burnt-orange and black-and-white trimmed unis, worked an offensive drive behind the quarterback titan Zach Gentry, an Adonis-giant who has drawn accolades all year, standing head and shoulders over the players before him. Cibola, in white jerseys and green pants, jittered on the defensive line, waiting for the play to break. To our left, remnants of the Eldorado band, in mismatched tees and sweatshirts and jackets, flipped through song books preparing for the next song. A slight cool in the air, this was, for me this year, a New Mexico midday version of Friday Night Lights- playoff football with a pseudo-familiar team hoping for the W and entry into the big game next week against Rio Rancho. Time would tell.

It was a football game, but for me with Steve, it was also catch up time, when we’d chat a little more about things we visited while eating at Blake’s. We’d do this off and on every year or so. Steve would be in town to visit, and he’d let me know, and we’d go sit and talk for a while and just catch up. A high school football game is as good a place as any for men to catch up.

“On a whim, I texted Darrel Mummert, not sure if he was free, but he said he was at his daughter’s soccer game and he’d come on over for the second half”, Steve had mentioned at Blake’s.

When he mentioned that nugget, I had had a moment of anxiety because, well, I had always liked and admired Darrel a lot when we were all in the same class at Eldorado. Truth is, I had always felt inadequate around Darrel. Darrel, along with Paul Self and Dan Holton, were three of four defensive guys on our junior and senior year varsity football teams who, despite their size and speed (according to Coach Johns), had earned the nickname “The Smurfs”. Undersized, they were big hearted, and hard-hitting on those teams, and I knew them as heralded football guys. Darrel, a happy and self-confident 5’4″, was a charismatic maverick who, along with the other Smurfs, enjoyed a popular following at school. I knew Steve first from basketball, where after playing in the system for three years at Eldorado, I was cut my senior year, while he made that varsity squad. My exclusion from varsity that year sealed my acceptance that I was not an athlete, and as such left me feeling pretty inadequate around guys who were. In other ways, my senior would be a banner year for most any other kid, but that athletic failure left me feeling numb for much of the end of my high school career. And while I’d see those guys in classes or in walkways or hallways or at events, I inevitably felt vulnerable around them. I had always wanted to be one of them- a kid with a sports letter, a varsity athlete- but I wasn’t. And it became a reminder to me as to why I was lacking.

After high school, Steve and Darrel became good friends because they studied business at UNM together, and those times shared, supplemented with a few crazy adventures and car talk, gave them a great friendship.

Steve and I reconnected after I skidded through my twenties, leapt into my thirties, and experienced a train wreck of a brief failed marriage which left me returning to New Mexico, crippled and shattered. Steve and his wife Keri adopted me as their third kid- an adult child- and nurtured me with weekly Ed tv show sessions and grace talk and availability time. Through their open home and hearts, I worked on returning to the living and soaked in their friendships. And Steve treated me like a brother, affirming me through a long season of lost light.

I’d ran into Darrel a few times over our two decades of being out of high school, and our exchanges were always courteous but brief. But my lingering insecurities remained.

“Mummert’s here”, Steve said as the Eagle’s poked at the end zone, a drive stalled by Cibola’s run defense. In a short time, Darrel, sporting a long gray- and black-streaked beard under blue eyes and a ball cap, wearing shorts in the brisk temps, was climbing the stairs to our right, followed by his young teenaged son. Reaching our row, he entered, gave Steve a strong handshake and brief half hug, and then he stepped around him, gave me a smile, and opened his arms for a full hug. I rose and met his gesture with appreciation, and then he reintroduced Steve to his son, and said, “And this is Bruce… Mr. Welton.”

For the next hour and some, the game happened, winning from time to time our attention and the arcs of cheers and boos and the brassy encouragement of the band. During the rest of it, questions were asked, memories shared, names swapped, and observations made. Our thoughts bounced back and forth from the present to the past, and then glanced at the future. Work, retirement, what the kids were like.

At one point I asked Darrel if he talked much garbage when he played. The coach, he shared, said that you may be small and you may be slow, but you can still make them remember you.

At another point, Steve shared a great vignette about his son, Graham, who a year earlier as a new (and small) teen decided he wanted to be a lacrosse player. He had plunged into learning the game by joining a team, and where his skills might of lacked, his heart made up for it.

In one poignant match in his young career, Steve’s son (perhaps a thin 5′ 6″) ended up manning on an opponent 10 inches taller than him. In an effort to challenge his foe, Graham bodied up on him and sticking at him on a play that ended with Graham on his back, and his opponent jibing him, “What are you going to do, Little Man?” Undaunted by the taunting, Graham continued to play his counter closely, not letting his larger size and weight intimidate him. Later in the match, when his foe tried to body into him in a power play, Graham executed the same release that left his opponent back down on the field, to which Graham responded, “What are you going to do, Little Man?”

Steve’s story hit home with me about a moment that greets every young male at some point as he’s growing up.

Life bodies up on you, and tries to throw you to the pitch, so then when you fall, it can ask you “What are you going to do, Little Man?” To those who accept its challenge and defy its diminution, and rather assert themselves, rejecting its recitations, maturity is granted. That’s where manhood comes from: at some point, standing up to life. Darrel had done that as young fella, sometime on the football field or somewhere before. As had Steve, on the basketball court.

Maybe that is why we like sports. They test you, and see if you will come back for more. More defeats- to hopefully find more victories.

At the final horn, Gentry and his Eagles prevailed, besting the Cougars by a touchdown. The game, and the yack session, were over. Joining the crowd, we followed the flow of the emptying stands to the exit gates. Whatever I had felt before coming to the game, Steve and Darrel left happy, brothers in the Eldorado family. A couple of Eldorado kids celebrating the W. And friendship in life.