Common cause

 The stadium lights were ablaze at Fremont High School the other evening, even though it wasn’t Friday night and the Eagles’ next football game was a few days off.

Ninety miles to the south, meanwhile …

Ninety miles to the south, there is a vacancy this week that cannot be filled.

There is, this week, an ache in a communal soul, and a hole in a communal heart. There is an empty locker, an empty uniform; an empty place in the hallways at school, and an empty place on the practice field as the South Adams Starfires prepare to play a 1A sectional championship game tomorrow night.

The opponent is Fremont High School.

Whose stadium lights drove back the November dark to remind us that some losses, some vacancies, are universal. And that they bind us together no matter what the circumstance or occasion.

And so the lights were on at Fremont, and down in Adams County they were on, too, at Bellmont High School, where they held a prayer vigil to honor the memory of  South Adams football player Gabe Steiner, who was 16 years old and a bright light himself until Saturday night.

At a little after 10:30 that night, see, someone  sped through a stop sign at an Adams County crossroads and plowed into Steiner’s car. He was airlifted to Fort Wayne, where the docs brought the unimaginable news that Gabe Steiner — football player, wrestler, all-around all-American kid — had no brain function.

Wednesday afternoon, his parents had the machines turned off, and let him go to God. And tomorrow night, Gabe Steiner’s teammates will play a football game without him.

It’s been a grand season for the Starfires. They’re 9-2, and the only two games they’ve lost were against Eastside, an undefeated 2A team, and Bluffton, an undefeated 3A school. Ranked No.1 in the state in 1A, they’ll be the favorite against Fremont, who’s ranked 8th.

Not that it matters so much, after this week. Not that what happened at that crossroads last Saturday night hasn’t lent a different aspect to what will happen this Friday night.

When two excellent football teams will battle it out for a sectional title. And when two small communities will rediscover the common cause that knits all small communities together, no matter how fiercely they compete on 100 yards of Indiana turf.

Your home truth for today.