Tale of two teams

For the past decade and a half, I have pretty much solely been an Iowa Hawkeyes fan. I graduated from high school and for the most part lost tabs of the teams, especially a few years later when most of the people I knew had also graduated and I no longer lived in the community.

This year has been a bit of a roller coaster for the Hawkeyes, with a great start and a crawl to the finish. I was there when they made the terrible mistakes to give away the Wisconsin game and watched as they let the Penn State and Purdue games slip through their fingers.

My husband and I also traveled to Minnesota for the first time to watch them convincingly beat the Gophers. I even said at one time it would be more exciting to have some closer games than the double-digit victories we had been pulling out. I’m biting my tongue now.

I went from looking into flights from Omaha, where I have a craft show, to Indianapolis, where the Big Ten Championship Game is held in case the Hawkeyes got a second chance at a championship and searching bowl game locations with dreams of smelling roses again to letting my husband bring a friend to the final game because watching us potentially lose to Nebraska would just be no fun.

As the black and gold team sputters through its final games, another team has caught my attention and no, they aren’t in Ames. That will never happen.

The PCM Mustangs “Great One Eight” football team is something special and has been really fun to watch this year. Since I don’t have any relatives on the team and know most of the kids’ parents better than I know them because a lot of them went to school with my brother and sisters, going to games was not a priority. At first, I mostly went when work required I get a few photos or a quote from the game.

As the season progressed, I kept tabs on the team by reading our great sports reporter Troy Hyde’s coverage. With each victory, many if not most that were more than three touchdowns, I realized how good this team is. Going to a game and seeing a pass from quarterback Reed Worth sail through the air and then actually be caught, a lot of times for a touchdown, was a sight to see. When I was in school, our air game wasn’t quite that strong.

It was a joy to see the boys celebrating after clinching the victory during the final game on their home field. A trip to the dome was secure and you could see how happy, and somewhat relieved, they were to make it that far.

My youngest daughter has also become a fan and has a couple favorites that I get to hear about when she sees them. For a story I did earlier this year, I needed a picture of Worth and Jarron Trausch after the game. As we waited, I told her to look for number two and number eight because we needed them to be together for the photo. After accomplishing our goal, number two, Trausch, and number eight, Worth, have become her favorites. One of the first things I heard after the team took the field during the semi-final game Saturday was “look Mom, there’s two and eight, we took their pictures.”

As the team makes their mark in the history book and plays in the first ever championship football game Friday, I will be there cheering with the rest of Monroe and Prairie City. It has been really fun to watch them, especially when my other team hasn’t been up to par, and I hope to be celebrating a victory for the “Great One Eight.”

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at jpierson@newtondailynews.com