It’s got to be the cookies

Published 9:32 am Friday, November 17, 2023

Sports fans are a superstitious lot. But I doubt there are any more superstitious fans to be found in the sports world than football fans in the south.

I guarantee you if you ask any serious football fan around here if they have certain rituals they observe, certain clothes they wear, certain things they do or say, or any other great number of superstitious practices they employ for their chosen teams they will acknowledge as much — just as long as that acknowledgement doesn’t interfere with the mojo in play.

If there is any risk of such, expect radio silence.

It’s no secret that I’ve been having Yummi Express teriyaki chicken (no veggies, extra teriyaki sauce) for lunch before every Central home football Friday since 2005. It is officially a ‘thing’ now, and I make no apologies for it.

With that said, today I share another example of football hysteria that has manifested the last few weeks locally.

Of course, Thomas County Central football is having a stellar year. Undefeated, ranked #1 in the state, back-to-back region champions. I’m the radio play-by-play guy for Central, and through our video production program at the high school, many of our students and other teachers are actively involved in Central’s games.

Back at the beginning of the season, for the Thomasville game, my high school classmate Linda Pearson (formerly Linda Dekle) out of nowhere showed up at The Jackets’ Nest stadium with two shopping bags slam full of homemade cookies she had baked for the broadcasting crew. Now when I say homemade cookies, I mean an incredible variety including caramel stuffed snickerdoodles, Biscoff cookie cookies, churro, butter pecan, sugar, M&M, Reese’s pieces, rice crispy stuffed sugar cookies with icing and sprinkles, etc, etc.

You get the idea. To say it was an unexpected treat would be an understatement, and they were predictably devoured with wolfish pleasure as Central won 45-7. At one point, my radio color commentator Bryan Davis looked up at me with a mouthful of churro cookie and said “these would bring peace to the Middle East.”

However, Linda had unknowingly planted a seed she could not have anticipated. When the next home game rolled around, I was sheepishly asked by a student pregame: “since we won last time, there WILL be cookies at the game, right?”

I hadn’t even considered that the cookies might have had a role in the victory. But, once the superstitious side of me considered it, I could see the correlation. But in the interest of decorum I dared not reach out to Linda to ask, even though really I wanted to.

So you can imagine my relief when, at that next home game, I saw Linda’s daughter Lauren (who was the first-ever female player on Central’s football team) coming up the stands, hands full of shopping bags full of cookies.

As things would turn out, the week Lee County came to The Nest to play for the region championship, I got a text from Linda. Seems she was going to be out of town and wasn’t going to be able to bake cookies.

In my gut, I felt a twinge of panic. No cookies? I quickly texted Kristy Faucett, who is now leading our broadcasting program, and explained the situation.

Her reply: “we’re doomed.”

See, Kristy is a talented baker herself, and I was hoping she’d subliminally deduct that the emotional stability of the entire county might be at risk by not having cookies there. Grasping the gravity of things, she immediately ran to the store and got supplies to bake several dozen chocolate chip cookies to bring to the game.

Result? Central won the region championship. Crisis averted.

The next home game the cookies didn’t cross my mind until the afternoon of the game. Turned out Linda’s mother had been hospitalized and she wouldn’t be able to bake again. I immediately texted Kristy, who immediately replied: “if you’ll come watch the classes I’ll go home to bake.”

At this point I put my foot down. “This is silly,” I thought to myself, and told Kristy to just not worry about it. I mean, seriously now…

But as the afternoon moved along, the potential absence of the cookies started weighing on me. No way around it, this was just too important to roll the dice on.

So, just before kickoff I ran to the store and bought four dozen bakery cookies. No, I didn’t know if the mojo gods would disapprove of them not being homemade, but when you’re as superstitious about these things as I am, any cookie was clearly going to be exponentially better than no cookie at all.

When I walked into the press box and pulled them out of the bag, one student looked at me and said from the bottom of their heart, “oh thank you Mr. Young…I was afraid there would be no cookies.”

Crisis averted again. Central defeated Northside 31-16. Last week Linda baked for us again. Result? Central 49 St. Pius 0.

Now I know in my head those victories were all the result of hard work by the players and coaches. But when things are going well you just don’t mess with the mojo, and in my heart I now know ‘tis better to win with cookies at hand than to lose with no cookies at all.