Talking to Mom on the phone this evening, my location or destination was never mentioned.  She didn’t ask.  I didn’t divulge.  She would have chewed me.  It would have gone something like this: “Danny Johnson, you are not a teenager anymore.  Quit trying to act like one.  You’re going to hurt yourself!”

She’s partly right.  I will hurt in the morning.  Fortunately, I made it home and all is well.

I emptied the ball bag tonight.  Sure, I had to air them up the night before.  We had not seen each other in a while.  How and why these balls all got turned with no laces to be seen I will never know.  They fell that way.  I took the picture.  There was nothing rehearsed.  When I sit here and look at this picture now, I see these balls telling me goodbye.  I don’t kick the laces.

Yes.  Tonight I went over to Crawford County High School and kicked on a field that resembles the one I used to kick on at North Harrison.  Crawford has not graduated to the likes of a nice Bermuda grass field.  This field is just plain grass.   The kind I kicked on 38 and 39 years ago on high school fields from Brownstown to Clarksville to North Daviess.

This field felt like home.  Though I wanted to make one from 38 yards, the best I could do was 33 yards.  It was amazing how far away that goalpost looked from 38 yards.  There was time I looked at the 50 yard line feeling I was almost safe kicking it 60 yards.  When I was a kid at North my longest on that field was from the opposite 48.  62 yards.  This was just me, a ball, a tee, and a goalpost.  With the help of a breeze and a sweet kick, I watched one fly over from 70 in Shreve Stadium in Shreveport in the summer of 1986.  That alone tells me this was a good time to turn in my shoe.

I hit the last three I attempted from 25 yards away.

Truly amazing how much pop the leg can loose in eight years.

I was nailing 40 yarders that day in 2015.

Today I didn’t smile so much.  Today was the end for this old kicker.

All this was really brought on recently when a friend of mine at another school asked if I was coaching football.  I told him I was not.  He asked if I wanted to.  I told him the situation would have to be right.  He told me their staff was re-tooling and I was the first person he thought of.  He said the route trees I was drawing up in 1985 looked like what he was looking at on Saturdays and Sundays in 2023.  He told me he figured long ago that I would have the kids at North Harrison averaging 500 yards of passing a game.  I told him that was not to be.  But it sure was nice to hear that.  I told him I interviewed for the head coaching job at North Harrison on two occasions.  I was turned away both times. That is news to many.  I never made a thing of it.  Both of those instances happened a long time ago.  That is just the way it goes.

My friend got my football wheels turning again.  I decided to end that tonight.

Look, when you get to kick in The Rose Bowl and you don’t miss, what’s left?

That’s why these balls were turned the way they were today.

More than anything, I will miss staring down a goalpost.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson