ShareThisGRACEMONT, Okla. - Gracemont High School opened more than a century ago, but it has never had a football team. It just didn't seem right in a football state like this. In this one-stoplight town half an hour northwest of Chickasha, there had never been Friday night lights.
So, occasionally, folks would discuss having football in Gracemont.
"But we didn't have anybody to carry the ball," said Roberta Fullbright, the high school principal who has lived in town for most of her 69 years. "We didn't have anybody who ... "
She looked at one of her teachers, Jeremy Scott.
"What do you call it?" she asked. "Is it called the quarterback?"
"Yes," he said.
"I don't know anything about football," she said.
"You're about to learn," he said.
Everyone in town is -- Gracemont is starting football.
The Lions will play their inaugural season this fall as an eight-man independent.
At a time when budgets are shrinking and finances are disappearing, Gracemont is taking a big step. Some might say it's a risky step in a town of 336. The cost of starting football when you don't have a helmet or a set of shoulder pads much less a field is tens of thousands of dollars.
But it turns out that while folks in Gracemont may not know everything about football, they know plenty about teamwork.
School officials have reached out to the community and beyond. Letters have been sent. Calls have been made. Donations have been solicited. Folks from near and far have responded.
"That's the great thing about small communities," Gracemont superintendent Mike Jones said. "People step up and lend you a hand when you need it."
The school, after all, is trying to save the town.
When Jeremy Scott arrived at Gracemont five years ago, one of the first things he noticed was that the school didn't play football. He grew up around the sport in Texas, he taught at other schools that played it, and with only softball in the fall, he felt a void. School administrators in Gracemont said the town was too small to host a team.
In the years since, neither the town nor the school has grown. With the loss of some low-income housing in town, the population and the enrollment have actually fallen a bit.
But Scott believes the sport was a want before, but now, it's a need.
Like many small schools in shrinking small towns, Gracemont is losing students. Slowly but surely, enrollment is dropping. The school needs to increase its enrollment. School leaders believe football is the answer.
A football team could lure new students while retaining current ones. It could also provide an academic incentive to the players -- they have to keep their grades up to play -- and Scott says that expects that to include all the boys in the school.
The man who has been chosen as Gracemont's first football coach anticipates every single boy is going to show up for the start of two-a-days.
"I realize in a time of budget cuts, changes may not always be a good thing," Scott said, "but we think this will be a change for the better."
In a letter sent to potential boosters, they admitted that this is quite a gamble for such a small school.
"But we are willing to take this chance to fill the needs and wants of our student body," they wrote.
Folks want to help them do just that.
Bill Sexton was among the several hundred folks who received the letter about Gracemont starting football. The owner of a school supply company in nearby Apache faxed over a list of football supplies that was six pages long.
"Circle what you want," he said.
Pond Creek-Hunter donated a scoreboard. Duncan offered weight room equipment. Lawton Christian and Burns Flat-Dill City sent shoulder pads. The list goes on and on.
The bus drivers are going to take the team to games for free. A local pastor is going to do the PA for free. A former student who is attending Oklahoma State is arranging his class schedule so that he can come back and help coach.
"And I want to tell you about his salary," Fullbright said as she pointed to Scott. "It's called zero," she said.
The soon-to-be football players have gotten involved, too. They are building their football field. They've moved fences, leveled dirt, dug holes and planted grass.
"I'm excited about it," said Rody Farrow, one of the Gracemont boys who will play football this fall. "I've been trying to get some of my friends that aren't thinking about playing ... to play."
That's the kind of enthusiasm that Scott has seen time and again from the boys. Whenever he plans a work day at the field, he only needs to tell a couple kids for the word to spread and for a big group to show up at the field.
"The kids ... that's who it's for," he said. "That's who's going to benefit the most."
But they are hardly the only ones.
Roberta Fullbright knows what will happen to Gracemont if the school has to close one day. The town will wither. The spirit will die.
She's seen it happen in other small towns that shuttered their school.
Fullbright has long told visitors that they'll know they're in Gracemont when they have to stop. Highway 281 dissects the town, but a blinking stoplight brings everyone to a halt.
"If we lose this school, people will still stop in Gracemont at that red light," Fullbright said, "but that'll be it.
"We lose our town."
That's why Gracemont is starting football this fall, why they are asking for support to build a program out of scratch, why they are busting their tails to make it happen at a time when most people are pulling back, not stepping out.
"Go ahead and say it," Fullbright said with a twinkle in her eye. "People think we're crazy."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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