MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
It was like the first day of school Saturday at Greenway Avenue Stadium when Fort Hill welcomed St. Frances Academy of Baltimore, Mount Zion Prep of Lanham and Clarkson Football North of Ontario, Canada for the 16th annual Queen City Quad.
A lot of new faces were out on the bright sunny day, as well as many more familiar faces – from both sides of town – that will be at Greenway for any football game, and now will be there every weekend through November.
There was a nice crowd on hand, particularly for football scrimmages. It was comfortable, even though the bright sun and the aluminum seating joined forces to make things a little warmer than some might have wanted it to be. But everybody seemed to be having a good time – happy to be there. Happy to be back.
You might as well say that with the season in West Virginia beginning on Friday, it’s now officially football season around here, which is reassuring to a lot of folks.
Traces of fall have been in the air, the streets in the Greenway neighborhood were again busy with cars and folks walking to the stadium. It’s game time. It’s football season. It’s Greenway; it’s home.
Folks still decorate their homes and neighborhoods with flags and signs. They hang football helmets with jersey numbers on telephone poles and trees, and they leave them there until it’s pretty much time to decorate for Christmas.
Football season is a holiday season here. The crowds at the games, like the city itself, are not as large as they once were, which is no wonder given the Allegany County Board of Education’s 1930s Berlin attendance policy to keep kids from attending, but for the most part, you see the same people sitting in the seats they’ve always sat in and standing along the fence that lines the top of the stadium just where you could have left them 30 years ago.
Living just two blocks from Greenway, I have grown accustomed to seeing a good bit of traffic, particularly during the fall and the spring when there are any number of events taking place at the stadium.
Cars line the streets along the intersection of Kent and Greenway and parking can be at a premium, particularly on Fridays and Saturdays.
You never know who you’ll see parking beside or in front of the house, or even at the end of the driveway, particularly on Homecoming. Or whenever Fort Hill plays a team from Ohio and the Wadsworth fans ask if they can tailgate in the back yard.
Hell, yeah.
Even on Sundays the neighborhood is humming, as religious services take place at two venues situated across the street from each other – worship at the church of CityReach Cumberland on Brookfield and, yes, on some Sundays, youth league and pee wee football at Stadium on the Green.
Basically, though, it’s any day of the week that gives the neighborhood a particular bounce from August to December, as Greenway hosts high school football on Friday night, soccer all day Saturday and football again on early Saturday evening; not to mention football, soccer and band taking place pretty much every day and night.
It’s always best in the neighborhood when the bands are there and they reach you from two blocks away.
Once the seasons begin and the teams are actually playing, there is a rustle each day and night, particularly later in the evenings when the stadium lights illuminate the neighborhood for blocks around. It’s comfortable and it is settling, because you are surrounded by life.
When it’s December, the neighborhood seems lonely in comparison. And it’s pitch-dark because the lights are off, and it’s too damn cold.
I do follow the games, yet I go to very few of them anymore. Been to enough, though I can still taste the Stadium Pizza and the Mustard Dogs …
Still, the games and the practices are there most every day, and everybody is there to see them, to enjoy them, or not enjoy them; but they’re there, and everybody is together.
You feel that everywhere in the neighborhood and in the community, whether you are attending the games or not; and you most certainly feel it when all of the fans and all of their cars, the buzz of activity and the security of the lights are gone for the winter.
With two schools (at one time three schools and a hospital), a grand stadium and athletic fields in place, this neighborhood has always been made for activity.
The cycle is endless, and it is timeless. It’s the perfect neighborhood. There’s no better place to be, particularly at this time of the year.
You truly don’t realize how important it’s been and remains until it’s the time of the year when the stadium sits dark and empty, so it means even more when it returns for another run.
It’s who we are. It’s what we love – football, our schools and our communities.
It’s all pretty Frank Capra wonderful.
Here’s one guy in the neighborhood who’s happy it’s back.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began. covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at mikeburke934@gmail.com. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT