Little Mums, Small Court at Lamar High School's Homecoming Game

Photos by Paul Knight

​Hair Balls has already seen Lamar High School play a game this season -- a 27-21 win against Chavez -- but this weekend we traveled to Joe K. Butler Stadium to watch the team again. It was Lamar's homecoming, and we were curious to see what a homecoming game looked like on a Saturday afternoon. (We covered a homecoming game last week in Rosenberg, but other than a few mums, we didn't see any homecoming activities.)

What we found this week was a bit odd.

First, Lamar was the visiting team during Saturday's game. Lamar had more fans than Bellaire at the game, but the Lamar fans sat on the visitor's side. The team also wore its white and blue -- with a little bit of red -- away uniforms, and that made things a bit confusing, because while there were plenty of "Go Big Red" signs at the game, cheering on Lamar, it was Bellaire that looked like the Big Red team.

Here's a few other ways that Lamar High School celebrated its "homecoming."

1. Mums. For the second week in a row, Hair Balls went to a homecoming game where there were hardly any girls wearing outrageous mums. That's disappointing, because giant mums decorated with teddy bears, whistles and cow bells are such a wonderful tradition. A few girls dressed as American Indians (Lamar Redskins) and wore mums. So did the entire Lamar drill team.

The Lamar drill team wears mums.

​2. The Homecoming king and queen. Another disappointing aspect of the Lamar homecoming was the lack of a large homecoming court. We would like to see a group of princes and princesses crowned, along with the king and queen. Because that's what high school is about. We did, however, enjoy the king and queen nominees walking onto the field past members of the school's Junior ROTC who had their sabers drawn.

The Lamar homecoming king and queen.

​3. Winning the game in the final seconds. We guess this really isn't a way to celebrate  homecoming, and Lamar didn't really win as much as Bellaire lost, but it was an exciting finish to a football game. Lamar was winning by six points with about 20 seconds left in the game, and Bellaire had the ball. The Bellaire quarterback threw a long pass that was tipped by a Lamar defender, trying to knock down the pass, but deflected to a Bellaire receiver who caught the ball and scored. With seven seconds left, following the 64-yard touchdown, the Bellaire kicker missed the extra point that would have tied the game.

Lamar won the game in the final seconds.

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