Football is a big deal here in American Samoa. In fact, a Samoan football player is 40 times more likely to reach the NFL than a player from the U.S. So of course everyone at Leone high school was pumped for the first game of season: Leone Lions vs. Samoana Sharks.
The excitement was contagious and my housemates and I bought bright yellow Leone t-shirts in preparation (We had to dig through piles and piles XL and XXL shirts to find mediums). I asked all my students who was on the team and what their numbers were so I could watch for them. Only half my class showed up for the last period of the day because football players and cheerleaders were excused for some reason.
After school we changed into our Leone gear and walked across the street to catch a bus to the stadium. There is only one football stadium on island so that’s were all the games are held. We got picked up by a school bus. It’s common for people to stop and offer rides even to people they don’t know, but I’ve never gotten picked up by a school bus. We were the only people on the bus besides 2 little kids. The bus driver was very chatty and had a nice conversation with Quinn (who later confessed she could not understand a word he was saying), and then dropped us off right at the field.
The game was complete with an excited student cheering section (one student had a drum that he played continuously through both JV and varsity games) and obnoxious fans for whom the ref can never make the right call. JV played first and couldn’t manage to put any points on the board. By the time the varsity game started, the field lights needed to be turned on since it gets dark here at around 6:30 every day. Unfortunately, the varsity team could not pull off a win either. I don’t know much about football, so I can’t say for sure what the problem was, but they weren’t catching very many passes, I can tell you that. However, the highlight for me was when a dog wandered onto the field sometime during the second half. No big deal. Dogs are everywhere and it wouldn’t have seemed like a Samoan football game without one.
At the end of the game we started looking for a ride home. The buses stop running at 6 and we didn’t want to pay for a taxi. Somehow we ended up on another school bus, but this one was packed (people were standing in the aisles and on the stairs) with cheerleaders and football players. The 3 of us piled into one of the seats in the front. Needless to say, it didn’t smell the greatest. It brought back some memories of riding home on school buses after soccer games in high school. We were dropped off at the store in front of our house as the whole bus yelled, “Bye Miss Abby, bye Miss Quinn, bye Miss Amber!”
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