Students plug back into Friday Night Lights

Henry Burgette, Staff Reporter|September 25, 2020

Fans will be able to see everything including the coin toss, tonight at 7 p.m. when fans are allowed back into the football stadium

Students are back in stands, at least for tonight and (presumably) the near future.

On Monday, the school announced that they were allowing the Senior students to have a chance to enter for a chance to win tickets to the Carroll High School vs Fort Wayne South Side for Homecoming.

The rest of the tickets were made available to the rest of the student body Thursday.

Everyone is excited, and they have a right to be. But what many students don’t know is the parents of underclassmen gave up their seats for this occasion.

“I can’t be thankful enough,” Bitting said, “I think the students should be very thankful for these wonderful parents.”

Now as most of the students guessed, things won’t be the same inside the stadium either. Usually, it is all of the students (the Neon Nation section) on the bleachers to the left when you walk into the stadium. But Mr. Bitting says differently.

Fans will be allowed back in for the opening coin toss and the rest of the game against South Side at 7 p.m.

“Instead of having the one area for students,” Bitting said, “they will be all over the place, some being in the Neon Nation section, then some being in the middle bleachers, and some being all the way at the bleachers behind the endzone. Students will also have to be separate from each other, but I have full confidence our student body can pull this off”

But there will be some things that will be the same such as there will still be concessions, and you will still be able to walk around, and it’s just the trust that has to happen to make this work.

“It was just a conversation that Mr. Ginder and I had to make,” Mr. Bitting said. “We both wanted to get that atmosphere back to where it was for the games, the students jumping up and down, cheering on their peers, that’s what we are trying to get back to.”

Students do want to know when things get back to the “Friday Night Lights” atmosphere and Mr. Bitting remains cautious.

“We don’t know when it will happen, we just have to follow what the governor says,” Mr. Bitting said, “It might not happen this fall, but I am just glad that these athletic events are happening even throughout these uncertain times.”