Tonight on ESPN2

Tonight on ESPN2, The Woodlands High School meets Lufkin High School for a nationally televised high school football game. Lufkin is taveling 109 miles for this District 15-5A game.

My wife graduated from The Woodlands HS (back when it was still McCullough High School). Her parents still live in The Woodlands and will be at tonight’s big game.

I graduated from Conroe High School (CHS), which is just 15 miles to the south of The Woodlands in Montgomery County (TX). Our two high schools were (and still are) big rivals:

In 1976, The Woodlands McCullough High School opened and Conroe High School students were split between the South County and North County [separated by the San Jacinto River].

The two schools played their first game in 1978. Thirty years later, the Battle of the San Jacinto River still rages on.

Tonight’s game is being played at Buddy Moorehead Memorial Stadium, which is on the campus of Conroe High School. Which, is cool — my wife get’s to watch her old HS team on television tonight, and I get to see it played at my old HS stadium (where I played football for my first two years of HS, and soccer for my last two years).

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Moorehead Stadium facts:

• The stadim is named after beloved football coach, the late Luby “Buddy” Moorhead. Coach Moorehead was an inspirational coach for the Conroe Tigers, known for his one-liners in the glory years from the early 1960s through the mid-80s.
• Coach Moorehead died of a heart attack during my Freshman year of football (during two-a-day drills). I was the last class at CHS to be coached by Coach Moorehead. I still remember his funeral held at our HS auditorium. I can’t remember what the stadium was called before they renamed it after Coach Moorehead.
• Stadium capacity: 8421 — which is a mid-size HS stadium, as there are numerous other stadiums in South East Texas alone with seating capacities of 10K — 15K.
• During my sophomore year in HS, we had to play all soccer and football games on the road, as our stadium was renovated during the year to replace the natural grass with astroturf, and to build a new locker room facility (for non-football realted sports, as the football team didn’t want to share their locker rooms with the soccer and track teams).