The town of Columbus, 40 miles east of my home town, was among the high school sports rivals when I was a teen. Our team was the Sheepherders, often shortened to Herders, and our colors were blue and white. The Columbus High School team colors were green and white and they called themselves the Cougars. A few miles farther down the road were the Absarokee Huskies who were orange and black. In those days, Red Lodge’s team was called the Redskins and their color was (surprise, surprise) red. A little more than a decade ago, the Red Lodge team changed its name to the Rams. The team colors are now blue and gold, and I think that they changed the colors before the name change, but I am not sure.

It is high school homecoming season, and the local schools here in the part of Montana that we are visiting are all active drumming up team spirit. As we drove through Columbus we saw green cougar paw prints painted on the streets. There is a single giant green paw print in a downtown intersection. I suspect that the decorations coincided with the homecoming parade.

Just 15 miles down the road, there are orange husky paw prints painted on the streets of Absarokee. They also have a giant paw print in a downtown intersection. Near the high school the names of the coaches and players are painted on the street as well. Absarokee is a smaller town, but it appears that they were able to muster as much or more money for paint as the team up the road.

We didn’t paint the roads when I was a high school student. I always played in the band, so my perspective on homecoming parades was mostly a matter of memorizing a few songs, trying to march in straight lines, and little else. The band usually led the parade, so we got to watch the rest of the parade as they pulled into the empty lot at the end of the parade route.

After I left high school for college, I never returned for a homecoming parade. I’m not much on school reunions. The Covid-19 pandemic changed some of the plans for our class’ 50th reunion, but I doubt that I would have attended anyway.

I am simply not an expert in high school spirit traditions, homecoming celebrations, or the painting of streets in small towns. However, I do have a few observations based on driving from Big Timber to Red Lodge and back again.

On the city streets, as opposed to out in the wild, the paw prints of cougars and huskies are remarkably similar in shape. The only way I could distinguish the one from the other was the color.

Apparently Sheepherders and Rams don’t leave paw prints behind. I didn’t see any prints painted on the streets of Big Timber or Red Lodge. I doubt that their schools exhibit less spirit than the neighboring towns. I don’t think that there is any lack of team spirt in their high schools. Painting streets isn’t the only way to demonstrate team loyalty.

Of course my own personal experiences don’t give a very accurate picture of high school sports. I grew up before the school sports gender equality mandated by the Federal Government in 1972. High School Sports, including football, basketball, wrestling and track were boys’ sports. Our high school did have a girl’s basketball team, but they didn’t get much attention. Girls could letter in cheerleading, however. The cheer leaders had uniforms in the school colors and traveled with the boys’ teams to games in neighboring towns.

Things are different now. I’m not a very big sports fan and I’m out of touch with high school sports. I used to enjoy watching games from time to time when i knew the players. Sports were important to many of the youth in church youth groups over the years, and I was interested in the things that were important to the youth, so I followed their high school teams and paid attention to the teams. These days, youth ministry isn’t included in my portfolio at the church. I have less contact with the youth, though I still know many of them through confirmation class and other church programs. I know that sports are important to them. I’ve talked baseball and track with some of the young athletes in our church. As far as I know, painting the streets hasn’t been a big deal with the teams where we now live. I’m not sure what the Blaine Borderites would paint on the street anyway, and the Ferndale Golden Eagles don’t leave paw prints behind. Bellingham High School changed their team from the Red Raiders to the Seahawks this year. The other high school in Bellingham, Sehome, is home to the Mariners. Seahawks and Mariners share their name with Seattle professional sports teams, so there is probably a bit of crossover of team identity items. Like the other high school teams in our area, there aren’t any obvious prints that one might paint on the city streets. Like the Herders and Rams in Montana they have to find other ways to express team spirit.

Of course there is the obvious difference between high schools here in Montana and those back home in northwestern Washington. In Columbus and Absarokee, there is not much traffic on the streets. There is time for the pain to dry between passing vehicles. You wouldn’t find a similar condition on the streets of the more urban areas of western Washington. Even the small towns have rush hours and there is no time when the streets aren’t filled with cars going to and fro. Painting the streets is probably just too dangerous to be practical as an expression of school pride in the place where I live. We’ll have to leave street painting to the folks in more isolated locations.

This week, we will leave the light traffic behind as we head back home. I’ll try to pay attention to high school homecoming activities just to see how they compare with what we’ve seen on this trip. I will, however, remain a casual observer. I’m just not into homecomings and reunions.