By RYAN S. CLARK, Beaumont Enterprise
May, 22, 2009
The purple and white-clad fans talked about who will play at tight end while the Port Neches-Groves marching band played “Cherokee.”
Teenagers hung out with friends on a cool Friday night as the Indian mascot danced. This went on while older folks relived memories.
And to think it’s only spring.
Nearly 4,000 or so people showed up to The Reservation to check out what adjustments PN-G football coach Brandon Faircloth and his staff made to a team that won three games last season.
“We had heard anything from a 1,000 people to 5,000 people (would show up),” said PN-G assistant coach JoeDale Cary. “At Aliedo there are people who care about the team and the community, but things here at PN-G are a little bit different.”
Minutes before the varsity started warming up, a few raindrops sent a couple hundred people under PN-G’s barely year-old aluminum stands. That is where Anne Hanks and Amanda Delcambre could be found as they talked about how much this means to the community.
Delcambre, who is the PN-G athletics secretary, said she fielded hundreds of phone calls over the last few weeks about the spring game.
“People were asking what time the game was and things like that,” she said. “So you could say that there was a lot of excitement leading up this.”
About a few hundred feet away from her was Tony Croshet, the vice-president of the PN-G booster club. Croshet said the booster club had sold 120 PN-G spring football T-shirts in a matter of minutes.
He wasn’t kidding. He barely had time to talk as people handed him money in exchange for shirts.
“This is the first time in about 50 or so years that PN-G has had a booster club,” he said. “And with budgets being spread thin, we’re out here to help out all the sports with helping things like pads or balls for the soccer team.”
The excitement not only sold T-shirts, but it even brought non-PN-G fans to the game.
“Yeah, I go to Nederland,” said Janna Bartz. “We have some friends who are in the band. But really I could care less about the game. Now if it was Nederland playing, yeah, I’d care.”
But even Bartz had fun as the PN-G band played at the stadium for the first time in months. Thousands of PN-G fans stood during the playing of “Cherokee,” PN-G’s signature song, as if this was Week 6.
“Actually, it was real flattering when it came to how we got involved,” band director Alex Wells said about the band’s involvement with the scrimmage. “Coach Faircloth called and said he wanted us to play so that way it would feel like a real game.”
