Just after my first daughter was born, I had an older guy tell me that the time between the day they are born and the day they start first grade feels like two lifetimes. The days are long, the weeks longer, and the months…just extend into an infinite horizon.

But the time between the day they start first grade and the day they walk across the stage to get that high school diploma goes by in a flash.

First grade is when, as a parent, the days, weeks, months and years begin to speed by, rolling into one mass of love and life that forces you to begin looking backward down a line of bittersweet memories...and ultimately that line becomes longer than the future that extends in front of you.

For football parents, the days between their son’s first tackle football practice at age 6 and their high school senior night at age 18 have both crawled and flashed.

The experience has been intense and variable…almost equal parts worrisome, ecstatic, joyful, sorrowful, fun and miserable. As parents, it has placed them on their highest mountaintops and driven them into their lowest valleys.

And it has taught them so much about their sons, and about who they are as parents.

This season seems to be ending as soon as it started. But, as we look back on the time between that brutally hot scrimmage in Finley Stadium against North Murray and this Friday’s game against Grace, we can see how much development has happened to each individual on this team…and how this team has developed its own character.

And that character, as mentioned in the last recap, is that of a very tight brotherhood that will be just as fresh in the souls of every player the day they watch their children cross that stage to get their high school diplomas. The peaks, valleys, lessons learned and relationships formed will stay with them in high relief for the rest of their lives.

That is what we celebrate Friday night…a culture shift, a school on the rise, and a football brotherhood at the heart of what’s happening at Notre Dame High School in 2026.

On to the game…

I wish we were talking about playoff arrangements. I wish those four points against Boyd Buchanan and Silverdale had landed on the other side of the ledger.

And I wish I’d bought enough land somewhere to work through all of that disappointment during deer season.

But here we are.

Grace Christian Academy comes to town Friday with an 8–1 record, an offense averaging almost 46 points a game, and an opportunity to improve its playoff position.

Apparently, nobody in charge of scheduling thought we needed a quiet evening.

I know there’s some discouragement around our program right now. The players feel it. The coaches feel it. Those of us who spend Saturday mornings mentally replaying punt snaps certainly feel it.

There’s also a fairly widespread assumption about how Friday is going to go.

Grace will get here soon enough to offer its opinion. Until then, we’ve got a football game to prepare for.

And this particular group of Fighting Irish has one more opportunity to play it together.

THREE OBSERVATIONS

1. Last Friday hurt because we expected to win.

There was a time when keeping a game close against one of our local rivals would have sent everybody home feeling reasonably encouraged.

After Silverdale, we were sick.

We gained 419 yards. We rushed for 314. We moved the football, got stops, and put ourselves in position to win. Then we made mistakes that helped turn all of that into a three-point loss.

Nobody needs another tour of the crime scene. I covered that pretty thoroughly in the recap.

But our reaction tells us something about where expectations have moved.

We expect our offensive line to move people. We expect our backs to make plays. We expect our defense to give us a chance. And when we do those things, we expect to finish the job.

Those expectations come with responsibility. We have to execute the ordinary plays, handle critical situations, and keep our composure when something goes wrong.

Friday gives us one more chance to put those lessons to work.

Michael Woodley just rushed for 144 yards on 10 carries. Dre Green produced 180 yards from scrimmage. JT Tramble scored three touchdowns. The fellows blocking for them had quite a bit to do with those numbers.

That ability didn’t disappear when the final whistle blew.

There is good football in this team. Bring all of it Friday.

2. Grace has enough weapons to make a defensive coordinator reconsider his career choices.

Let’s give the visitors their due.

Grace has beaten Chattanooga Christian 43–0, Silverdale 55–24, Webb 45–10, and Boyd Buchanan 57–20. Its only loss was 31–27 to CAK, and it bounced back last week with a 31–13 win over Lakeway.

Senior quarterback Corbin Hobson, #3, has thrown for 2,069 yards and 26 touchdowns, completing 71.4 percent of his passes.

That’s efficient enough to be irritating.

Senior Terrion Thomas, #6, has 12 rushing touchdowns and nine receiving touchdowns. He averages about 68 receiving yards and another 48 rushing yards per game.

He has also thrown three passes this season. All three were touchdowns.

I would suggest somebody keep an eye on him.

Then there’s sophomore running back Javey Stinson, #33, averaging almost 110 rushing yards per game. He ran for 192 against CAK. Freshman receiver Braylen Mathis, #5, averages more than 61 receiving yards per game and has seven touchdown catches.

So, yes, Grace presents a substantial challenge.

But last week, Lakeway outrushed the Rams 209–104, ran 17 more plays, and gained more total yards. Grace won anyway, turning an interception and a recovered fumble into touchdowns.

That ought to sound familiar enough to get our attention.

Notre Dame has to turn productive possessions into points. We have to protect the football, execute our kicks, and tackle well enough to make Grace earn what it gets.

We cannot afford to help them.

They appear perfectly capable of operating without assistance.

3. These seniors deserve our full attention Friday.

We’ll have plenty of time to talk about next year.

We can discuss returning players, offseason lifting, younger talent, and everything Coach Hill and his staff are building after this game.

Right now, some young men are getting ready to put on a Notre Dame football uniform for the last time.

They’ve spent years practicing in August heat, lifting when nobody was watching, getting treatment, studying assignments, and coming back to work after losses they wanted desperately to avoid.

They’ve helped grow this program. They’ve given the younger players examples to follow. And, as we learned last week, they’ve taken responsibility for one another in ways that reach well beyond football.

I keep thinking about those teammates showing up for Briggs.

There was no scoreboard at the hospital. Nobody was checking the standings at his house the next day. A teammate needed them, and they went.

Friday will ask something different of that same bond.

It will ask them to trust one another after a missed assignment. To help a teammate recover from a mistake. To keep doing their jobs when they’re tired, frustrated, or hurting.

The younger players will remember how the seniors handle that.

And the seniors deserve to look around and see teammates, coaches, parents, and supporters fully invested in the game they still have left.

TWO QUESTIONS

1. What will we do when Friday gets difficult?

At some point, Grace is going to make a play.

A quarterback completing more than 71 percent of his passes generally manages a few. Thomas is going to demand attention. Stinson is going to make somebody tackle him.

We need to be ready for that without treating every successful play as confirmation that the evening has been decided.

Line up again. Get the call. Know the assignment. Play the next snap.

And when we make a play, use it. Finish the drive. Get off the field on third down. Give ourselves something to build on.

Our best chance comes from staying composed enough to keep playing useful football, especially after something goes wrong.

We’ve seen what this team can do. Can we sustain it through the moments that have cost us?

2. What will our boys see when they look into the stands?

This question is for the adults.

We ask the players to prepare, compete, and support one another regardless of how they feel.

Friday gives the rest of us an opportunity to meet that same standard.

Come to the game. Be loud. Encourage a kid after a mistake. Give these seniors a crowd worthy of the work they’ve put in.

They have earned it.

They know the record. They know who’s coming. They don’t need us to explain the difficulty of the assignment.

They need to hear us when they make a stop. They need to feel some life in the place when we move the chains. And if the game gets hard, they need to know their people are still with them.

We can manage that.

ONE PREDICTION

I’m predicting this team will give us something worth standing up for Friday.

I can’t promise the score. Grace has earned its record, and beating it will require our best football.

But I’ve seen enough from our boys to believe they have another effort in them. I believe the seniors want to finish with a game they’re proud of. I believe their teammates want to help them do it.

And I believe we ought to give them every bit of encouragement we’ve got.

Brotherhood has taken hold in this program. This Friday, that brotherhood gets one more game together.

One more pregame.

One more time coming out as the Fighting Irish.

One more opportunity to line up beside somebody who has spent the season doing the hard work with you.

That deserves everything we have left.

THE SENIORS OF 2026

#0 JaTari Davis, WR/DB

#1 Dremel Green, Ath/DB

#4 Javeon McWhorter, RB/DE

#17 Jacorrion Tramble, WR/DB

#19 Miles Carter, Plug/DL

#27 Robby Monahan, K

#28 Robert Ray, Plug/LB

#29 Jeremy Casey, Plug/LB

#41 Matthew Woodall, TE/LB

#42 JJ Connor, Plug/LB

#44 Will Isaaksen, P

#46 Ky’Rese Manghane, OL/LB

#50 Nathan Tartar, Plug/LB

#51 Teddy Terry, OL/DL

#79 Richmond Bell, OL/DL

For most of these young men, there will be a moment at about 10:00 PM on Friday night when they take their shoulder pads off…and that will be the last time they ever do that.

You don’t play pick-up football as an adult. Once that armor comes off after the final game, it never goes back on…

Let that sink in a minute.

Then come Friday and make sure they hear us.

Go Irish.

DMGB.