We were too small for a football team. Soccer was our football. Being a small academic school, our boy's sports teams mostly sucked (how else could I have been first string in soccer and tennis?), but our girls teams did pretty well.
Never got the experience of a homecoming football game. None of the girls was interested in cheerleading either.
In the 9th grade I conceived of a theory that team sports, football in particular, was social training for "us and them" (ie. war). A bit oversimplified, but consider many of the rituals around homecoming and "rivalries" with neighboring districts.
