Thoughts and Struggles Trying to Watch a High School Football Game at Home

For the past few Fridays, I watched a lot of Football. I like to watch football in the fall, but this year I wanted to watch the local high school football games. I have a few reasons for this, but the main ones is I plan on moving, so I don’t know how many chances I have to watch the football games, and there really hasn’t been much for me to do in my small town due to the pandemic. Even though there are many home games I could watch, I haven’t watched a football game at the local high school in over ten years.

The reason why I didn’t go to a football game is not because I didn’t want to support them or was afraid I would run into someone I didn’t want to. (Ok, that last point was true) It was because of my allergies.

When I was in high school, I was in marching band. The high school I went to was close to farm fields that grew crops that I later learned I have serious allergies to. I don’t have allergies to every variation of the crops, but I do have serious allergies to the ones that grew in the fields. After I graduated from high school, I found out how serious my allergies to those versions of crops are and that belonging to marching band was probably one of the worst extracurricular activity for me to join.

Even though I regretted joining band in high school because of my allergies (But later realized that, due to the school’s curriculum, the only way to avoid it was to leave that high school and go to school somewhere else) I decided to avoid certain areas I knew would trigger my allergies. This included my town’s high school, which is very close to farm fields.

For the past few years, I satisfied my desire to watch the game by reading the local newspaper to see how the team played the previous week. This year, I decided to go to one game and be satisfied with that. When I told a few of my friends about my plans, they discouraged me to go. They watched a game at the same football field I wanted to go to in previous years. They also have similar allergies to mine and, after their experience going to the game, they believed I would probably start to have an allergic reaction while watching the game. So, they suggested seeing if the game would be live streamed on YouTube.

In previous years, the games would never be available online. This changed because of the pandemic. In order to allow others to watch the game while social distancing, the high school would live stream the game to watch at home. My friend’s high school alma maters would do this, so they suggested I would see if the local high school is doing this as well.

After doing some checking, I found out the high school did live stream the game. So, a few Fridays ago, I watched the football game from start to finish, including half time show, while staying safely at home.

I really enjoy watching the football game from afar. I’m looking forward to watching more games later in the season. It was fun eating my own snacks and wear my pajamas while watching the game. I also really enjoyed watching the game from a place where I can use an air filter and feel safe from my allergens. I plan on looking for football game livestreams from my friend’s alma mater high schools as well as my own.

If you or someone you know wants to watch a high school football game without leaving your house, I highly suggest looking for a live stream of the game. Usually the home team will be live streaming the game, so look at the home team’s high school website for the official YouTube channel. If you have trouble finding a live stream or any sort of mention of the game online, call the front office and ask if they will be live streaming the game and what YouTube channel it will be live streamed on.

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!

P.S. If anyone wants to know how the team did, well… they lost the past two games by over thirty points. The score for the last game was so bad the game ended in the third quarter. So, I’m not sure how the rest of the season will go for them.