There's a version of this night where I stay home. Where I tell myself it's too far, too late, too much fuel. Where I watch the score update on my phone from my couch and feel fine about it.
I'm glad I didn't listen to that version of myself.
Arroyo Grande was playing Bakersfield High in the CIF playoffs. The kind of drive where the valley opens up flat and brown and you start wondering if the whole thing is worth it. It was worth it.
"I was standing in the end zone with the best view on the field. Not because I planned it perfectly — just because I wanted to be close to whatever was going to happen."
Playoffs football is different. The regular season has a rhythm — you know the team, you know the flow, you can half-predict the moments. Playoffs, you don't know anything. The game can end on any play. Every snap carries weight that the kids feel in their legs, in their hands, in the way they look at each other before the ball is snapped.
This one went to extra time.
I started showing up to games to document friends and family. Somewhere along the way I found myself genuinely loving it — maybe because the brotherhood and intensity reminded me a little of rugby. That feeling of a team pulling together toward something that matters. Nothing quite prepares you for what happens when a kicker lines up in overtime of a CIF playoff game.
The Bakersfield crowd was not quiet. They were doing everything they could to get in that kicker's head — noise, movement, momentum they'd built all night long. It was their stadium, their crowd, their moment to steal. And he lined up anyway.
It was good.
Arroyo Grande won.
I knew a little about what that kick meant beyond the scoreboard. Sometimes you show up knowing there's more at stake for a family than the outcome. When it went through the uprights, I was honored to try and capture that moment for them.
What happened next is the part I think about most. Not the celebration — though that was real, and loud, and worth every mile of the drive. It was the brotherhood. These kids finding each other in the chaos. Helmets off, arms around each other, laughing, screaming, soaking in something they'd worked years for. Seniors who had grown up playing together — who had been teammates since they were kids — finally getting their moment.
"The community made the trip. The stands were full of Arroyo Grande. I was just the one with the camera — trying to hold onto something everyone there already knew they'd never forget."
That's what Friday nights are, at their best. Not the score. Not the stats. The moments between the moments. The way a parent watches their son through the fence after a win, knowing this is one of the last times they'll get to see him out there. I was so happy for my friends who got to see their son have his moment that night.
I take pictures because I believe those moments deserve to exist beyond the night they happen. Because families deserve to have something to hold onto when the season is over and the pads are put away and life moves fast toward whatever comes next.
If your son is a senior next year — if this is his last season under the lights — I want to be there. Not just to shoot the highlight. To witness the whole thing.
— Simon Kurth, TWM Stories