Dear Robin,

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Hi! My name is Jessica McKibben. I am an 18 year old female and a senior at Prattville High School. I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself.

I’m a very passionate, strong-willed young lady that loves life and almost everything in it. I’m very patriotic and nationalistic. I recently registered to vote. I’m in the Air Force JROTC program at PHS and am on the drill team, color guard, and flag folding team. I am currently seeking an appointment to the Air Force Academy, but regardless of whether I attend there, I will be going to college and joining the Air Force immediately after.

I have several other interests besides the military, though. I enjoy reading and drawing. I also love music – I play guitar and sing. Scuba diving is quite possibly my favorite pastime. I was born in Orlando, FL, and grew up loving anything aquatic. I’ve always been very involved in community service and volunteer work, too. Last, but certainly not least, I am an avid sports fan. I played softball and basketball for several years and enjoy spectating any sports event. Football happens to be the sport I enjoy watching most.

On that note, I’m going to start explaining why I’m contacting you. As a school-spirit-filled senior girl, it should come as no surprise why I love football so much. Everything about the game and the Friday night atmosphere enthralls me; there isn’t any other way to start off the weekends in the fall, in my opinion.

But at the last football game of my high school career, I witnessed a travesty. On the night of December 4, 2009, my alma mater squared off against our biggest rival – the Hoover Buccaneers. It was a game that would make history – in more ways than we could have imagined. If Prattville won, it would be their 4^th straight state championship, making their streak equal with Hoover’s longest, and their 5^th state championship total (they won back in 1984). For Hoover, it would be the 1^st state championship their seniors had seen. And it would keep Prattville from becoming equals, in the halls of state champion fame.  The game began with a tangible wave of anxious anticipation and excitement. I doubt the residents of Tuscaloosa could hear their own thoughts over the cheers exuding from Bryant-Denny stadium.  The most anticipated game of the season began.

It was evident from the beginning of the game that it was going to be a very tense one. A mere 12 seconds into the game, the first objectionable call of the evening was made. Prattville’s #5 tackled Hoover’s #1 – it was a clean tackle, which every fan was privy to seeing up close, thanks to the two Jumbotrons standing sentinel above the field. The refs called it a personal foul and gave Prattville a 15 yard penalty.

Prattville fans were a little miffed at what seemed an obvious unmerited call, but knew their boys could overcome it. The cheerful excitement resumed and the game went on. Nothing too terrible in the first quarter happened, as far as calls go. However, when the second quarter rolled around, two very large and unforgivable blunders were made – by the refs, not the players. With four minutes and seven seconds left on the clock, there was a pileup near the end zone. Hoover was running for a touchdown, but the man with the ball was bombarded by Lions on all sides. It was a fumble, because the ball was not in the Buc’s hands, and the Buc was still about a yard and a half away from the end zone. Yet the “white hat” ref ruled it as a touchdown for Hoover. (Just as an aside, it was noticed in the films that one ref on the sideline threw out the beanbag symbolizing a fumble, but retrieved it without saying anything after the white hat called it a touchdown.) Prattville – players and fans alike – was incensed. This was one of two game breakers.

Later on, near the end of the second quarter, the ball is dropped and rolls out, but the clock is not stopped, and Prattville loses a minute off the clock. They were given about 15 seconds back. These 60 seconds would prove to be a crucial loss at the last play of the game.

The last and possibly most idiotic call of the evening, which took the game from Prattville indefinitely, was during the 4^th quarter. Ten minutes and forty three seconds into the last quarter, Hoover’s quarterback is sacked. Prattville recovers the ball and runs it in the endzone for a touchdown. Now, when the quarterback was sacked, he had his arm behind his head, elbow at a ninety-degree angle, poised to throw. However, he had not even broken his elbow around his shoulder, much less thrown the ball. His arm was perched behind his head, completely still, when he was sacked. But for some reason, the referees called it “forward motion” and the pass was rendered incomplete. Prattville didn’t get their touchdown.

You may not be moved as you’re reading about this in an e-mail, but if you had been in that stadium, you would have been shaken to your core. The fury and disbelief emanated from the Prattville side of the stadium. The Lions were literally roaring (pardon the pun). The refs made the call and then insisted that the game carry on, but the Prattville fans booed for a solid five minutes, shaking the bleachers and surely every citizen outside the stadium within a mile radius. The terror on the opponents’ faces wasn’t exactly well-hidden, either. The play in question was replayed on the Jumbotrons several times. Even the TV announcers voiced their disgust at the obvious blown call.

The game proceeded. Prattville got near the endzone once more, but didn’t have enough time to do anything with the ball. (Thank you refs, for taking that last chance away).  Hoover was declared victorious and their fans cheered. Prattville fans, in total shock, anger, and disbelief, seemed glued to their places. Many a face was stained with tears. It looked more like a funeral than a ball game. No one seemed to know what to do, to ease the hurt for the boys. Silently, the Lion fans filed out of the stadium, with blank expressions and wounded hearts. If you were watching the game on TV, you saw that every Prattville player’s eye black had been smudged with tears.

I don’t know about you, but seeing a group of over 200 men crying, both young and old, is something that really crushes me. Seeing the raw hurt in their eyes and on their faces – there was no way to leave the field without having your heart break for them.

The evening was a miserable one, in every sense of the word. I arrived at the stadium an hour early, and it was already only 35 degrees. The air was damp. As the night went on, the temperature dropped to 30 degrees, and on top of that, it began to rain. By the end of the night, I was freezing, soaked, and exhausted. I went home, doing everything in my power to NOT think about the game and what had happened. When I arrived back at my house, I took off my damp, icy clothing – every piece of the ensemble having a Prattville logo of one kind or another on it – and threw it in a heap on the floor, not wishing to think about Prattville or football in any way, crawled into bed, and fell asleep with tears still falling. The next morning, I rose and went about my normal Saturday routine without much thought. I kept myself busy, thankful for the numbness that had replaced the heartache from the previous evening. I managed to have a decent day, no more emotional moments. But Saturday evening, after I had done everything I could think of that needed doing, I sat down at my desk, trying to think of something fun to occupy myself with. But as my eyes roamed around my room searching for a source of entertainment, they inevitably landed on the pile of Prattville clothing I had discarded the night before. And as I looked at them, my mind became flooded with images from the game, and the feelings of intense disgust at what had occurred. I became extremely angry again. And I decided that something had to be done.

So I went on to Facebook and created a group called “Prattville Lions Are the Real State Champions.” I really just wanted to see who felt the same way as I did. I figured that airing our grievances together would speed the healing process.

But the group began to grow quite rapidly, and I found that a very large fan base felt the same way I did. I received a plethora of messages and comments on the game and the refereeing. As fuel was added to the fire, a new and different kind of fire lit inside of me and I decided that further action needed to be taken. As videos and pictures of the controversial calls were posted to the group’s page, any doubts of “losing” the game were removed from my mind. We won the game – on the field. But terrible, blatantly incorrect calls stole the title away from us. So I started gathering information, to try to see what could be done. I found that only the school could file a formal complaint against the AHSAA, so I visited Mr. Hicks (Prattville High School's principal) to see what he was doing about it. At that time, the group was approximately three days old and we had 1,500 members. I then had a meeting with a handful of knowledgeable adults to discuss what other actions could be done to fix the atrocious wrong that our boys had been dealt. Which, essentially, is why I’m here now, writing to you.

We – the group – followed proper protocol in addressing the AHSAA. We went up the unofficial chain of command, respectfully demanding answers and expressing our unanimous opinion that the boys had been dealt an unacceptable injustice. Numerous e-mails were sent to the AHSAA and several calls were made, too. Most people did not receive a response at all. And the few that did got a generic, unsatisfying response that did nothing but take up space in each person’s inbox. To my knowledge, only one person (whose name I shall not disclose) got a personalized response from the association and it was nasty and unprofessional. This is a huge source of dissatisfaction from a "professional" organization.

Our boys, who worked several times a day, six days a week, and about 45 weeks out of the year had their goal snatched from them. Their dream, cheated from them. Everything that the seniors had worked up to, pulled like a rug from beneath them. The legacy that had been handed to them – dropped. They not only had the heartbreak of losing unjustly, but the feeling that they had disappointed everyone that played Prattville football before them, and the fans that supported them. They had fought and played well, and for what? To have their hard-earned victory stolen from them.

Ultimately, that is the reason I created the Facebook group. I knew that our boys and coaches couldn’t do this for themselves. If they say anything, it just looks like sour grapes and nothing gets fixed.

But quite frankly, I’m the kind of person that does not tolerate unfairness well. So I decided that I would fight for these boys, if I had to do it alone. But when I made the group, I found that I had over 2,000 community members that were willing to fight, too. So here we are, waiting for answers and for something to be done so that reparations to our boys are made.

We’re not whining about losing. We’re upset because we realized that both teams were cheated by the referees – Prattville earned the game but wasn’t given it, and Hoover knows that. There was no doubt about that, as the Hoover fans watched the controversial calls over and over on the Jumbotrons. Hoover was a worthy adversary, there’s no discounting that – but they simply didn’t play quite as well as Prattville did that night. Everyone in the stadium knew who really won that ball game, and it wasn’t the ones carrying the blue trophy out. That’s almost as unfair to Hoover as it is to Prattville because the players and fans will always have to live with the knowledge that they were given that game, and that’s how everyone will remember it. To steal the glory of a legitimate hard-earned win by cheating – it’s a disgraceful move on the referees’ parts. It takes away any desire to play the game that the boys have.

This is a problem. Officials should not be ruining state championship games. While it is completely understood that officials are human and will make mistakes, in a time when High School football games are televised to a large TV audience and played at large venues (Bryant-Denny stadium), the ASHAA has made no effort to provide HS officials with the tools to do their job as well as they can.  This is exactly the reason college and pro football went to official replays - the technology enabled them to help the referees call the game. And I’m not bringing this to your attention just for my boys’ sakes. I know full well that this could happen to any other team – and it has in the past. Also, one of the other "victims" in this scenario are the officials - they get to watch their blown call over and over on the big screens and TV replays and not be able to do anything about it.  The current system does not enable the officials to keep "the honesty and integrity" of the officiating crew in the game.

This has been a problem in the past and failures of the AHSAA to act will enable it to continue to be a problem. Why no one has stood up against the AHSAA before now is beyond me. But they’ve really crossed the line and the illegitimate officiating must stop. I’m standing up for every team in the state because no one deserves for something like this to happen to them. Steve Savarese (the head of the AHSAA) has elevated himself to a position where he thinks he doesn't owe anybody - especially the parents, fans, boosters, players, and coaches - any explanation or reassurances of the conduct of officiating or possible procedural changes being made. This organization has the ability to fine coaches, suspend players, and govern the conduct of high school football, yet is unable to correct its own discrepancies.  This is why it is important for the public to point out the indiscretions and for the AHSAA to respond.

So now, the root of why I’m contacting you. I’m asking for your help. We don’t want any other team to have to go through this same thing ever again. My group and I have done everything in our power to reach the AHSAA and to get things fixed, but we apparently aren’t worthy of a response from the association. We really aren’t asking for anything unreasonable. These are the four things we want to come from this:

1)      We want Steve Savarese to make a public apology to both teams, since they were both cheated in different ways.

2)      We want the referees who judged that game to be fined or banned from officiating championship games, as well as an assurance that biased referees will not be allowed to officiate huge games like this in the future. There have to be equitable people without personal agendas and politics to rule games.

3)      We want the national committee that the AHSAA answers to to amend the rules so that the referees may use instant replay – or for the Jumbotrons to be turned off so that players don’t have to have botched calls replayed over and over in their faces, which is nothing less than turning the knife inside their guts.

4)      We want for Prattville to be declared Co-Champions. This has been done before and we feel it is the only true reparation they could receive.

Again, I’m asking for your help. We have waited patiently to get answers, but have gotten little attention and have been told that we’re expected to just let this go. I need you to present this to the public so that the AHSAA receives enough pressure that they HAVE to answer. If they haven’t done anything wrong – which is what they’re implying – then what reason do they have for ignoring our questions?

I can’t stand by and do nothing about something that is so clearly wrong, and I hope you feel the same way.

Regardless of whether you can help us or not, thank you kindly for taking the time to hear my story.

With warmest regards,