By Staff
Arthur McLean
I hope most of you got a chance to see the lunar eclipse Wednesday night. You won't get another chance to see one until 2007. It was a pretty impressive sight.
I had a chance to photograph the event for the newspaper along with a fellow shutterbug. You can see the results of the collaboration on page 1.
Did you know that the moon is 238,855 miles from earth? And that the earth is 93 million miles away from the sun, and that astronomers have actually snapped pictures of a clump of stars more than 14 billion light years away from earth? It's mind-blowing, but at least it's linear in one respect.
Moving from astronomy to something more terrestrial, all this funny full moon stuf must have worked its mojo on our high school teams in Atmore. For the first time in a very long time, we have two local high school football teams in the playoffs.
Escambia Academy wrapped up its bid to make the playoffs last week, before the loss to archrival Monroe Academy.
And while it certainly looked like the ECHS Blue Devils were headed for a dismal season, they pulled it all together when it really counted and beat the three teams they needed to beat in their region – and got a little help from other games – to make it to the playoffs as well.
I've often been asked what happened to the Blue Devil football program. It was so dominant in the 1980s, but they haven't done much since. Since I'm not up on the local football history, I haven't had a good answer.
Now I do. I can simply say, "we're back in the playoffs."
I knew folks liked their high school football, but I don't think I was prepared for the level of passion exhibited here. Folks really get up for it.
We've tried to cover as many games as possible with a little help from folks outside the organization here. Without that help, we wold have had a fundamental math problem, too many teams and not enough people to cover them.
I want to thank Zack Brooks for the fantastic job he's done this year following the Cougars during the regular season, and publisher Chuck Bodiford for his work on the Blue Devil games. We'll keep going to the games and following our hometown teams as they make their way into the playoffs.
We've got a couple of good football teams here. Let's cheer them on for a few more weeks.
Arthur McLean is the editor of the Atmore Advance.