Center of attention

High school football is both brutal and beautiful, exhilarating and humiliating.

For the moms.

The players? They’d probably choose different adjectives.

Now seven games into the season, there’s a motherhood of brotherhood that has evolved around SLUH football.

At every game you’ll find 45 moms in various incarnations of Jr. Billiken apparel, proudly wearing our numbered name tags and a button made from our sons’ pictures.

And each one of us cheering for the team, but keeping a watchful eye on our boys. For each one of us, it’s not that big of leap from the moment we counted fingers and toes to the moment watching your son run on the field in that first varsity home game.

A blink of an eye, they say.

Football can be hard on the moms, especially the moms of the skill players. Julie McDonagh’s son Trevor (above) is one of the best quarterbacks in the area — a Division I prospect who has thrown for 11 touchdowns and 1,585 yards passing. But he also has thrown seven interceptions, and those are the toughest of all. The kid can throw spiral after perfect spiral with pinpoint accuracy to  a receiver on the run, but it’s that one INT that can get the fans belly-aching and the mom’s heart breaking. “And you hear every comment in the stands,” Julie says.

Kathryn Sansone, mother of Stefan, No. 31 (right), one of the area’s top receivers and one of McDonagh’s favorite targets, says she sometimes can’t watch a play unfolding that involves her son — which means she has opportunities to cover her eyes quite a bit. “I wait for the crowd reaction,” she says. “If they’re cheering, I look.”

Christine Klug has watched her son, receiver Mitch Klug No. 18 (below), make receptions all over the field all season long but never get in the end zone — until Oct. 7 at Eureka High when he caught a McDonagh bullet pass near midfield and barreled his way to the endzone for the game’s first score  en route to a 38-14 SLUH victory.

After a scoreless first quarter, SLUH had roared ahead in the second half with four touchdowns, the first by Klug, a 54-yard pass from McDonagh to Sansone, an interception by Raymond Wingo and on a rushing clinic put on by Terek Hawkins (below right), who barreled in from the 2 for a 28-7 halftime lead after eating up the clock and yards on a SLUH drive.

Their moms, of course, living vicariously through each play.

And the toughest position for a mom to watch? Has to be center. No one notices a thing about the center if he’s doing his job — snapping the ball to the quarterback then throwing a block. But one bad snap and suddenly the center is the center of attention.

SLUH center Andy Riek, No. 72, a junior (above, with McDonagh), is a first-year center who’s pretty consistent. But early in the third quarter, he snapped one over the head of McDonagh resulting in a Eureka fumble recovery — and a subsequent Eureka touchdown, a momentum shift. Suddenly it’s 28-14 and they’re back in the game.

Riek and McDonagh spent a few minutes on the sideline after the bad snap getting back in sync, and a helmet tap from McDonagh tells the junior to go out there and get ’em next series, which he does. But all the while, Riek’s mom, Denise, is two rows behind me agonizing, I know.

And after another change of possession, with Eureka getting the ball back and driving down the field, I turn around and give Denise a knee slap, because I know how she’s feeling.

Denise is a regular, along with Julie McDonagh and Alicia Behrndt, at the weekly Friday morning team Masses and parent coffees afterward. We’ve talked about being moms up in the stands and how hard it is when your son plays in a visible position. You solve a lot of problems over coffee.

So I also tell Denise I’ve got my pocket finger rosary ready to go in case she needs it. I try to keep one with me, just as a reminder that, no matter what happens to you over the course of a day, prayer is always an option.

The very next play, Eureka fumbles and free safety Paul Simon picks it up and runs it into the endzone for a touchdown, stunning the Eureka crowd. SLUH 35-14.

Coincidence or divine intervention? I’m pretty sure the Blessed Mother probably had better things to do than worry about a high school football game in far western St. Louis County that night. There was, after all, a baseball game in Philadelphia.

But the game’s momentum did shift back in SLUH’s favor after that moment, and the team never looked back.

As the seconds ticked away in the fourth, the moms in the bleachers relaxed and there were smiles all around on the track as the SLUH team came back to the bench.

And Denise? She was smiling, too, in her own quiet way.

“Did you notice what happened after that rosary came out?” I ask her after the game.

She smiles. “All I know is that it gave me peace,” she says.

The motherhood of brotherhood lives on.

To view more SLUH varsity football photos from photographer Nancy Winkelmann, visit nancywinkelmann.zenfolio.com/varsitypix