Camping out

Jamie Wachter

August 28, 2008 11:53 pm

— THOMASVILLE — The football field has offered relief for the Cairo Syrupmakers this week.
After Tropical Storm Fay devastated Cairo and Grady County, the practice field has become a safe haven away from the pain at home for some Syrupmakers.
“It was good to get back on the field with these kids,” Cairo coach Tom Fallaw said. “It was good to see them and good to get back working toward a good cause and kind of get our minds off all the bad things that have happened over here.
“Everybody has to handle it in a different way. We had kids that were affected on the team. We did have a couple of kids that houses got flooded and things of that nature. You just kind of come back together and everybody is working toward a common cause and sometimes that eases the pain of what’s going on at home. That’s pretty much what we did. Plus, you mix in the fact that we didn’t get to play a game and the kids are upset about that. There was a lot of hurt.”
In addition to providing that break for the Cairo players, the practice field has also become a campground for the Syrupmakers. With Grady County schools out of session until Thursday and with no game looming today, the Syrupmakers were able to go back to the basics during workouts Tuesday and Wednesday.
“It kind of felt like summer camp a little bit,” Fallaw noted. “We got to get some good practices in and got some good work in.
“We didn’t have anytime in full pads out of school like some other schools had, so we can kind of went back and had some long practices. We did a lot fundamentals and went back to the tackling and blocking and just got after each other.”

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