WHAT’S CAUSING ALL THIS | By MITCH LUCAS / Goodbye is always implied

Taylor Oliver stood quietly at the locker room door, just offset from the scoreboard at CHRISTUS Trinity Mother Frances Rose Stadium.

The calm before the storm that is a third-round high school football playoff game in Texas — it was at the door, in more ways than one.

Oliver led the Kilgore High School Bulldogs out of that door, through the inflatable bulldog (I’m not sure it has a name; for this column, we’ll call him Roscoe), and onto the turf at Rose Stadium.

And I was nervous.

I never thought this entire week that the Bulldogs would lose Friday afternoon’s UIL Class 4A third-round playoff game against Lindale. But typically, when you play a team that you played already that same season, even if you won, it’s normally a more competitive game. And then, there’s this.

Kilgore’s fortunes at Rose Stadium haven’t always been the best since my arrival here some 20 years ago, give or take a fortnight or two.

We’ve won some — that nutty game against Kaufman in 2013, when it was so cold your grandmother in Rancho Cucamonga could feel it, and she wasn’t even there; she was home, you know, in Rancho Cucamonga.

And we’ve lost some, like the infamous Matthew Stafford-led Highland Park comeback game in 2003, and I’m completely convinced that if Kilgore wins that game, the Bulldogs would have won back-to-back state championships in ’03 and 04; they did go on to win the 4A title the following year.

At any rate, Kilgore often wins when it is the visitor at Rose, and often loses as the home team. I love the closeness of the drive, and the hospitality of the stadium staff, and all the people. But I never feel great about it. Soemthing about those losses are still… haunting.

So, Friday morning, my football baby — that’s Ashtyn, my youngest, my 18-year-old redhead Hi-Stepper who was born during that 2004 state title season — was getting ready for the game. And I mean EARLY Friday morning, up at 5-something-or-other, getting ready for an early breakfast with her Hi-Stepper sisters Kenzie Miller and Kyleigh Lewis.

Getting ready for what could be a great win for her as a senior, or her final football game.

And that’s saying something: Ashtyn’s first-ever trip out of the house, like in her lifetime, was to a football game that I was covering when she was just two years old. It was that very state title game in 2004, at Floyd Casey Stadium at Baylor University, in Waco. Kilgore won, in double overtime, over Dallas Lincoln, claiming the 4A, Division II state championship and a 16-0 record.

But when Ashtyn called me in Friday morning where she was getting ready, meticulously getting hair in place and spraying away like a madman, she was, well, human.

“Daddy,” she said, and stopped spraying. “I’m scared.”

I imagine that scene plays out all over Kilgore, all over Texas, all over the country on days of playoff games, in coaches homes and the homes of seniors across the nation this time of year; anyone who faces what I call “football finality,” so to speak.

“I know,” I said. “I’m not ready for it to be over, either. But it’s high school football. It ends for someone today. It’s hard.”

I reminded her of the program we’ve been binge-watching, “Longmire.” Without spoilers, on the final episode, Sheriff Walt Longmire is preparing for the show’s climatic scene, a shootout, and he’s in the truck with his deputy-turned-love interest, Victoria, who’s worried about both of them getting out alive.

Longmire tells Vic, “Goodbye is always implied.”

“And it is,” I told Ashtyn. In high school football, in the playoffs — in life, sweetheart. Goodbye is always implied. There are no guarantees.”

We’ll avoid the heavier life overtones and go with this.

I’ve seen so many teams, Kilgore and not, have their seasons ended, and it’s never easy. Only 12 teams in the state of Texas (two per classification) will lift a trophy after a win in December: the division I and II winners in Classes 1A through 6A.

For everyone else, the tears will fall.

It’s a tough way to look at it.

But the memories?

The memories along the way, they last for a lifetime.

My son Jacob played football from the time he was old enough to breathe, just about it. We just knew Jacob was going to play throughout his high school career and into college.

He did, to an extent. But Jacob had an accident in his 10th grade year, and had to have a pin put into a finger on his throwing hand. That’s obviously not good. And then he tried to throw too soon. That’s worse.

Ultimately, the damage was done, and re-done. Jacob got down, and did leave the team. But he went back to coach Mike Wood and asked to come back because he couldn’t stand the alternative: being away from the game.

He played his senior season. He didn’t play quarterback. He wore number 20. But he did recover two onside kicks in a single game, a tough achievement. He went back and stuck it out, and then caught on with the program at Kilgore College for a while, throwing on their practice squad before he decided it was probably time to move on.

But I was proud of him. He did it on his terms. And he finished, the right way. Not quitting.

I was as proud of him as I would’ve been if he had thrown for 6,000 yards and 40 touchdowns. Not because it made him tough, but because he loved the game. And he told me he went back because he wasn’t ready for it to end.

He didn’t want it to end.

Nobody does. We never do, be it football, a walk with our grandfather, one last drive in the Mustang before we let it go, one last kiss.

My father loved football. He passed in 2010, after battling a stroke, and never got to see Jacob play. He did get to see his beloved Alabama Crimson Tide win one more national championship. And he always loved the fact that Ashtyn’s first trip out of the house was to Kilgore’s state title game.

But as Ashtyn and I talked Friday morning, we joked about all kinds of things that happened over the week as I tried to lighten the mood before it was time to go to the game.

What happened?

Well, Ashtyn and the Hi-Steppers performed at the half and rocked it out, like they always do. And Kilgore’s players and coaches dealt with Lindale their own way. If you’ve read our game story, you know by now it was a KHS win.

Football ended for Lindale this season. And it continues for Kilgore, for at least another week.

Goodbye is, indeed, always implied.