Gainesville’s excitement builds to fever pitch

Tradition is a routine action taken again and again, year after year, for the sake of nostalgia. It might be as minutely controlling as defining how you eat your breakfast on Christmas morning, or how you celebrate your birthday with your family.

Or it could dictate the activity before a wedding, or after a funeral. The nature of tradition as a valued and crucial aspect of any event has allowed it to seep into our lives, and to some it is as necessary a nutrient to life as food or water.

If there is a better example of this than Gainesville High School, you would be hard-pressed to find it. What is fascinating about Gainesville, however, is that it’s not just a bunch of rituals that keep the Red Elephants together. It is a mindset of tradition, a way of thinking that is instilled into Gainesville students from their kindergarten years.

Read more from Lila Kate Cooley

Fired-up Falcon Nation is united

Once, as I was wandering through the hallways of Flowery Branch High School, I read the back of a football player’s shirt. It read, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

Nobody likes trials or hardship, but we like the effects of them. Just as the iron sharpens iron, trials produce endurance in us. This is a lesson that is extremely valuable on the football field as well as on the field of life. And few know it better than the Flowery Branch football team.

If you were to compare last season with this season, you would see huge differences in our school and football team. Last year, we all knew the team would do well. This confidence combined with a great football team lead us all the way to the dome. This year, however, that confidence started off lacking. People weren’t sure if we would win many of our games, and it showed. The community around here truly wants Flowery Branch to win, but for a while they just didn’t believe.

Read more from Coulter Burch