Badgers enjoy successful homecoming

 

Bill Campeau - Sierra Star

 

Homecoming last Friday evening for the Yosemite High School Badgers proved to be a success on several fronts.

The varsity football team beat its arch-rival, Sierra High School, with a field goal and a fourth quarter, bone-jarring tackle and fumble recovery, resulting in a touchdown that iced a 10-point victory.

A Homecoming King and Queen were selected at half time to the delight of cheering Badger students.

Parents, and those who remember “how things used to be” when YHS and SHS squared off on the gridiron all behaved themselves. Both sides cheered their athletic heroes and dropped the invective, which often in the past has marred these varsity football clashes.

And Justen Peek, who as quarterback for three years led the Badgers against the Chieftains, came home from college to add his moral support for many of the buddies he used to play with.

He’s now a red-shirted freshman at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. Next fall he’ll add his muscle as a linebacker to a team that is looking to be a contender in its league. He’s one of a number of freshman footballers red-shirting this season.

Meanwhile, he’s majoring in engineering. Cal Poly has an excellent college of engineering and that’s why he went there.

His mother, Susie, is the Badgers’ football team mom. She and her husband for three years have had the entire squad at their house for dinner every Thursday evening. Her husband is trying to get her to retire, but it’s tough.

She says that most of the bad stuff that has gone on during past games hasn’t involved the players. The kids are too busy running and passing and tackling and knocking one another down to worry about throwing insults around.

“They play hard and when the game is over, they shake hands on the field and that’s that,” she says. Her husband agrees. “They play clean, tough football, and that’s the way it should be.”

The Peeks enjoyed last Friday night’s win. Son Justen played Sierra four times, all of them close games, once as a sophomore, twice as a junior and once as a senior last year, the only time he beat the Chieftains.

Homecoming had a special meaning for him, as well as for the varsity that took it to Yosemite’s biggest rival.

A homecoming worth remembering.