Proud to join the ‘Rover nation’

This may not be a smart thing to admit this week, but anyone who knows me well knows that I am not a big fan of football.
I’ve often joked when the subject came up, “That’s the sport with the funny-shaped ball, right?”

Occasionally, I’ve managed to pull off that line with a straight enough face that people have actually believed me.

But over the years, I’ve never really been a fan, a fact I’ve attributed to being a member of a champion marching band at a New Jersey high school that not only disdained the music program in general, but only won two of all the miserable football games I was forced to sit through during my entire four years—and one of them was against the local juvenile detention home (whose players arrived on a black school bus guarded by guys with shotguns). Combine that with the fact that it always seemed to be sleeting or freezing or both during their games, and that despite all that losing, the district kept funneling much-needed funding out of other programs (like the marching band) to try to pull the football program out of its decade-long slump (funny thing though—they never tried getting a new coach), and the cheerleaders at my high school were straight out of “Mean Girls” and encouraged to be so, and you have a decent idea why I never really took to the sport.

Probably as a result, I never really understood collecting sports memorabilia either.

In the past weeks, that’s all changed.

It started last month, when I went to my very first Rovers game. I needed some photos for The Easton News. I figured I’d get the shots and run, but when I got to Cottingham Stadium, I decided otherwise.

I’d never been to a football game I enjoyed before, but going to a Rovers game is something special.

The stands were filled, and everyone was having a good time—including me.

The band was a real part of the event, not some servile auxiliary, and the cheerleaders actually cheer, and do it well.

Looking around, I saw a real, inclusive—not divisive—community. Rich, poor, young, old, no matter the ethnicity or color of skin, “everyone” was there.

And I cheered a touchdown with enthusiasm for the first time in my life. I’m still gloating that Easton won that one 39-0.

This Sunday I stopped by the high school cafeteria to get some pictures of Rover players signing autographs for fans for The Easton News. At the end of the event as I was preparing to leave, one of the parent volunteers grabbed an Easton pennant and insisted I should have it, signed by all the players. The team was also preparing to leave, but they stopped, and all signed it for me.

Thanks, guys.

I have the very last pennant signed by the whole team before the 100th game—and I treasure it greatly.

You see, I never expected to call myself a football fan, and in truth, I’m still probably not. But I’m definitely a Rover fan.

These past weeks, I feel I’ve been given an amazing gift, and that pennant (which will be framed) is the perfect symbol of it.
Community and tradition are among Easton’s greater strengths, but they are also among Easton’s greatest gifts.

I grew up in an upscale, suburban neighborhood, but community and tradition are things that cannot be bought nor are created overnight. Easton is particularly special because of its inclusiveness in its community and tradition, something the community I grew up in never learned.

One does not have to have money to be a Rover. One does not have to have had ancestors on the Mayflower to be a Rover.
And no one of any particular cultural or ethnic persuasion is any more a Rover than anyone else.

See, I’ve discovered this is the greatest club. To join the “Rover nation,” all one has to do is join wholeheartedly.

And that’s one club I’ve never been more proud to say I’m a member of, one more reason to say I love living in Easton.

I can’t wait for Thanksgiving.

GO ROVERS!

(Originally published in The Easton News, November 22, 2006)