Bookends

St. Louis is unique in its plethora of private Catholic high schools. Dozens of them sprinkled throughout the metropolitan area, — all boys, all-girls, co-ed — each with their own traditions and persona and drawing students from an abundance of Catholic St. Louis families. That’s why “Where’d you go to high school?” is as ubiquitous in this area as angst over the Cardinals and toasted ravioli.

But that’s also why football in the all-boys Metro Catholic Conference is fun. They’re not just high school football games; they’re family reunions. So before St. Louis U. High played at Vianney Sept. 23, I found myself surrounded by black-and-gold clad fans in the parking lot catching up with old friends Chris and Sally Drazen, whose son Tom wore No. 52 for the Golden Griffins, and Mark and Michelle Hollman, who son Michael lined up at wide receiver wearing No. 88.

We’ve known both families for 12 years, since SLUH No. 45, Matt, and Michael and Tom, started kindergarten at St. Justin Martyr in the fall of 1999. That we were meeting again at a football game in the boys’ senior years was like bookends in our friendship that began as parents of Rugrats.

We laughed, caught up on each other’s lives, talked about our boys’ hopes and dreams for college and beyond, then went into the game and sat on opposite sides of the field. It’s fun watching the game when you watched a few of the kids on the other team grow up, too.

As a SLUH parent, I was cheering wildly for the Jr. Bills, who won handily 48-0. But I was also thrilled when Michael made a couple of catches for Vianney, knowing Mark and Michelle were on the other side to see it. And when Matt ran down a Vianney player and prevented a special teams touchdown, I was pretty sure Sally and Chris, Matt’s St. Justin basketball coach for nine years, were smiling for the kid Chris called “DoubleM.”

The boys? They caught up in their own way: Helmet taps and head nods, and bearing down on the field and perhaps playing a bit harder knowing the boys with whom you went on pumpkin-patch field trips wore the opposite uniform.

“Did you get a chance to talk to those guys at all?” I asked Matt the next day.

“Not really,” he said. “We tapped helmets at the end of the game.”

I’m pretty sure an extra helmet tap is a football player’s sign of respect. And then this:

“I saw Tom out there on special teams and I ran toward him and made sure I hit him.”

“You did not.”

“I did,” he said.

“And then he hit me back.”