By Joe Kiesa and Casey Platenik
Staff Writers
What were you doing on Saturday, Oct. 12? Senior Brad Carr, sophomore Grayson Burns and junior Ryan Durkin were hosting a football tailgate at Jamesville-DeWitt High School. It was from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the outdoor basketball courts before the Senior Day Varsity Football game. It was an all kids event and anyone could go, but no parents were invited. “Mr. Goodson and a janitor came out once to bring out a trash can and grab some food,” said Carr. Because Carr, Durkin and Burns were not part of a group organized by the school, they didn’t need or ask permission to host the tailgate.“No one asked to do it, they just did it,” said Mr, Goodson.
“The turnout was great,” said Carr. It went exactly as they planned it to go, the only problem was that the grill ran out of gas with four burgers left on it. “There weren’t any other problems,” said Burns. But both Carr and sophomore Mike Schwedes said they would have like to see more upperclassmen there to support the seniors.
“It was a great way to mingle with friends before the game,” said Kinsey. Gitzen said that “the food was good and cooked very well.” All the food was gone by the end of the tailgate. Senior Ella Digiovanni, one of the few girls there, said, “It was pretty fun. Free food is always nice.” Freshman Kyle Hurley really enjoyed the Rolos and peach salsa. Freshman Jake Brazie and Kinsey both say, “It turned out to be better than I thought it was going to be.”
Burns and Durkin are going to try and do it a lot more next year, but Carr will be off in college. “We are going to try to make this an annual thing, so every Saturday home game,” said Durkin.
Since it wasn’t part of the school’s plan, how did the boys get the idea? Durkin, Burns, and Carr were sitting at lunch trying to decide what they wanted to do before the game, when Durkin said, “we should have a tailgate.” They spread the word about the tailgate through twitter, “I heard about it from Twitter,” said senior Jafar Kinsey,word of mouth Junior John Gitzen, however, heard about the tailgate from the announcements, and starting group messages to text people, and then when they got some responses, they got the food and beverages and got the grill from the Burns’. They paid for all the chips, dip, salsa, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, sausages, and soft drinks that were there. They didn’t know how many people would be there so they got as much food as they thought they needed.